ARMY REFORM.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 837, 18 July 1871, Page 3

ARMY REFORM.

At any moment the fate of the army may be the fate of the nation, and the work of three centuries may be undone, if our military organisation should be unequal to the demand made on it. This is the immense argument with which the Army Regulation Bill proposed to deal"; and when the time comes for the second reading, and the debate on its principles, how have we been met ? JNot by any broad considerations of proper constitution of the army regarded as a national force ; not with any discussion of the relation in which it ought to stand to a people who prize above all things freedom of development; not even viith a discussion of the best means of augmenting and enlarging it j not, in short, with anything statesmanlike or even administrative, —but with dissertations on the interests of officers, the value of their commissions; the virtues that a system of purchase have developed among them; the question whether they ought to receive an instant payment of five millions in hard cash, or whether the State may be permitted to repay them gradually. We share Lord Elcho's sense of disappointment. —" Times," March 10. Murphy, the anti-Romanist lecturer, has been brutally assaulted by some Irish miners at Whitehaven. He is in a critical condition. Amy Richardson, of lowa, weighs 352 pounds. No man will marry her for fear of big-amy.