1831.] ' [ 431 ] 



NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL. 



Nothing can be a more awkward circumstance, nor a more common 

 one, than for public men in power to be expected to perform the promises 

 which they made before they were in that desirable situation. The 

 army are beginning to cry out, and the navy are not backward ; they 

 are not great penmen, but they can make a noise notwithstanding, and 

 their anger, if not very classical, is perfectly intelligible. The Age 

 thus disburthens the soul of a veteran remonstrant on the subject of the 

 Baring dynasty : 



" Where, let me ask, is there a more flagrant case than that of a Captain 

 of the 1st regiment of Life Guards? This gallant son of Mars never saw 

 a shot fired in his life, except at a pigeon match, at the Red House, at 

 Battersea; nor was he ever out of the smoke of London. He first entered 

 the army as an ensign, in November, 1824 ; was made a lieutenant in 1826; 

 promoted to a troop in the Life Guards, in September, 1829; and had a 

 brevet majority given to him in November, 1830 'just six years in the ser- 

 vice/ Is this acting fairly towards the army ? I am myself a captain, of 

 seventeen years' standing, and twenty-seven years in the service; and that 

 this stripling should be put over my head, as it were, in six years, is some- 

 what galling."" 



Those Barings are lucky dogs, it must be owned, and thrive in all 

 directions. But the Captain may rely on it, that whatever may be the 

 glory of a brevet in the Blues, the true card is to be on the muster-roll 

 of the Greys. Seven and twenty years in the service, and only a cap- 

 tain after all, may seem hard measure enough, ; and 211. per annum, 

 is certainly no very luxurious provision for a gentleman verging on fifty, 

 as we may suppose a captain of seventeen years' standing. And yet there 

 are a crowd of lieutenants who would think themselves the most fortu- 

 nate fellows alive if they could but get what the captain has been enjoy- 

 ing for seventeen years ; crowds of brave fellows, who have seen 

 service against every enemy, hazarded their lives in every field, and 

 burned up their livers in every climate where an English soldier has 

 trod, and this too for twenty years, and are lieutenants still, and likely 

 long to be, and to enjoy the munificence of this richest of all countries 

 at the prodigal rate of about seven shillings a day. Let the captain 

 think of those things and rest in peace, and growl no more at majors of 

 six years' generation. 



The Pension List is thrown into the background for the time; but if 

 the Bill pass, Mr. Guest pledges himself that the House, and the world 

 too, shall hear more of it ; meanwhile little intimations of the approach- 

 ing sweep come out, to the boundless indignation of the pensioners, fair 

 and unfair, in the following style : 



" Mr. T. P. Courtenay, M.P. for Totnes, is in the receipt of 1,600. per 

 annum viz. oOO. as agent for the Cape of Good Hope ; and a pension of 

 1,000. per annum, granted him in 1825. The following two items, likewise, 

 appear on the Civil List, thus: ( T. P. Courtenay, in trust for Elizabeth, 

 Frances, and Catherine Courtenay, pensions on the Civil List, September, 1806, 

 1,000. ;' and ( Ann Courtenay, pension on Civil List, 1827, 300.' The mem- 

 ber is returned by the corporation influence, being only fifty-eight freemen." 



This is said to be official, and if so, we can only congratulate the 

 Courtenays upon those public merits which, doubtless, have secured to 



