.

Nevertheless your Memorialists disclaim the most distant imputation of invidiousness at the better fortune of their military brethren, or of any other branch in your honorable service; but they have deemed it necessary to particularize the above contrasts, in order to shew, beyond question, their real state of comparative inferiority, in relation to other departments; in further illustration of which fact, they beg to advert to your military chaplains, who enter your service at the corresponding ages of your Memorialists, (without having incurred one half of that expense necessary to the medical education,) and whose income, from the day of their arrival in India, exceeds that of your military servants, even after a period of 20 years service, independent of the incomparable advantages the former enjoy of returning to Europe, after the short period of 15 years, on the pension of lieutenant colonel, viz. £ 365 per annum.

It would be illiberal on the part of your Memorialists, to draw any comparison between themselves and your ecclesiastical servants; but, on the score of publie utility, arduous duty, general information, and professional character, it cannot be shewn that the latter possess any claim on your Honorable Court for a scale of remuneration so superior to that granted to your Memorialists.

In proving this their abject condition, your Memorialists use this line of argument, not, as above declared, from feelings of envy: but purely and honestly to draw your attention to the urgent necessity of its speedy amelioration; and, in this spirit, they beg to adduce a further instance of their merits and claims being totally overlooked by your Honorable Court, in that countenance and provision you have, to the ignominious prejudice of your medical establishment, vouchsafed to a class of persons lately introduced into your service, under the denomination of veterinary

surgeon.

Your Memorialists, in no degree doubting the utility of the veterinary art, or indeed of any other contingent branch of knowledge, studiously avoid entering into any comparative enquiry as to its nature and character, or the time and expense necessary to its attainment; but it is indeed, with feelings of humiliation and regret, that, for the first time on record, they should be held forth to the world by your Honorable Court, as less worthy of remuneration for the care and responsibility incurred by them for the preservation of the health and lives of their fellow creatures (your Honorable Company's licges) than those intrusted with the lives and health of the horses in your Honorable Company's army; a feeling so derogatory to human nature generally, and more especially, in its application to the character of your Memorialists, that they persuade themselves your Honorable Court could only have been betrayed to evince it by some informality or inadvertence in the routine of official business.

The following Table, extracted from the orders of your Honorable Court, bearing date the 27th October, 1827, and from the General Orders of your supreme Government, dated 9th February, 1828, exhibit the ignominious contrast above alluded to.

Your Memorialists beg to observe that, from the constitution of the medical de partment in this country, it appears to have been assumed that they were not naturally liable to that decay of health and constitution consequent on length of service in a tropical and unhealthy climate, in common with their countrymen and fellow servants; since no provision for such contingency has ever been recognized for that department, a subject to which your Memorialists earnestly crave the consideration of your Honorable Court.

Your military servants, in the junior ranks of lieutenant and captain, when disabled from active military duties by sickness or broken health, are eligible to various local appointments, yielding a comfortable subsistence, in the invalid battalions, garrisons, paymasterships of pensions, and several others which it is unnecessary to detail; while, in the higher ranks of major and lieutenant colonel, the command of provincial hattalions, invalid tannacks, local corps, invalid corps, and garrisons, not only affords them a handsome independence, but, in fact, equals in many instances, the allowances of those in the line, without entailing on the one the expenses or important duties of the other; while the maximum of pension granted to a medical officer, who may have served your Honorable Company from 36 to 44 years, is only 300 sonat rupees per month.

The non-existence of such provision in the medical department, is the more to be regretted, not only as it now or eventually affects those who from misfortunes or embarrassments may never have the means of returning to Europe, but more especially as it involves consequences injurious to humanity by your medical servants being compelled to remain in the performance of important duties, to which from broken health and constitution they are unequal, and from the discharge of which it cannot be doubted they would gladly retire on receiving an adequate provision in the invalids establishment, without which it would be unreasonable to expect they would willingly relinquish their only means of support.

The principle of an adequate provision on a footing of respectability and comfort for all grades of your military servants when worn out and incapacitated for active duty by climate and length of service, has been fully recognized and long acted upon by your Honorable Court, not only in regard to your European, but to your native servants also, and your Memorialists trust such an exception in their case will no longer be upheld; and that your Honorable Court will sanction such arrangements in the fixed allotment of the medical duties of garrisons, civil stations, and invalid pay, as would yield a comfortable provision for those members of the medical profession labouring under the above-mentioned circumstances, a measure which, on the score of promotion, would prove at the same time as beneficial to the medical, as its operation proves to be in the purely military department.

In the assimilation of rank of the officers of the army with those of His Majesty, your Memorialists have, in the grades of assistant surgeon and surgeon, the corresponding nominal ranks assigned them of lieutenant and captain; but this corres

pondence of rank in the two medical departments ceases with reference to the superior grades, and hence your Memorialists are excluded by the regulations of your service from that distinction and respectability in the army and corresponding rate of income enjoyed by His Majesty's medical staff; an anomalous privation to which your medical servants are alone subjected.

This will be obvious to your Honorable Court, on reference to the Pay-Table of the Medical Staff in His Majesty's Service, by which it appears that a surgeon, after 14 years' service, receives 14s. 3d. per diem. A surgeon after 18 years' service receives 18s. 10d. per diem. In the next rank, that of physician to the forces, 198. per diem. Of deputy inspector of hospitals, 11. 3s. 9d. per diem. Of inspector of hospitals, 17. 17s. per diem. Of principal inspector of hospitals, 12001. per annum. Of director general of hospitals, 20007. per annum.

The above scale of remuneration strongly exhibits the unmeasurable superiority enjoyed by the medical department of His Majesty's service, when contrasted with that of your Honorable Company; while the numerous other advantages attendant on these medical grades, (advantages not existing in your honorable service,) render the contrast still more unfavourable to your Memorialists.

The most general and important of these advantages consist in the medical officers of His Majesty's army being chiefly employed in, and deriving their emolument from, numerous medical situations distributed throughout their native country, as hospitals, garrisons, and depôts;-head quarters of military and recruiting districts, those of the ordnance department, and various others unnecessary to mention, exclusive of the many medical staff appointments in His Majesty's colonies, not only in the West Indies, but in the Mediterranean, the Cape of Good Hope, the Mauritius, Ceylon, New South Wales, and the Canadas, all of which have corresponding local advantages, or contingent as comfortable quarters, free of expense, wine free of duty, coals, candles, forage, general cheapness of living, and, in most parts, an equalization of currency, and by exchanging appointments with their professional brethren in Britain, they may continue to enjoy these peculiar advantages, the absence of which in your service entails on your Memorialists a state of perpetual exile from their home and country, a sacrifice required of them without any corresponding or equivalent benefits being conferred.

As a practical instance of the want of corresponding rank in the army, we beg to adduce the case of Dr. Burke, His Majesty's inspector of hospitals in Bengal, who, from his corresponding rank of colonel in the army, receives the same amount of salary as the members of your Medical Board, and for this reason shared in the distribution of prize money for the capture of Bhurtpore with the officers of that rank, while Mr. Superintending Surgeon Reddil, the senior in rank of all the Company's medical officers, present on that occasion, shared only with majors after a period of 36 years' service, and in the performance of similar duties; an unjust distinction, not only implying an inferiority of merit, but entailing a pecuniary loss to your Memorialists on a casual occasion only once to be expected in the longest course of military service, and consequently the more to be valued.

Your memorialists have yet to advert to a resolution of your Honorable Court published by your Governor General in Council, in military orders, No. 254, of the 29th November last, equally afflicting your Memorialists in common with your other military officers, by subjecting them to a loss of half batta, at the four principal lower stations of the army of this presidency;-a measure they cannot look upon without alarm and dismay, as they consider it a direct infringement of that implied understanding on which they entered your service; a breach of contract, if once recognized, that may be extended ad libitum; for on the same principle, your Honorable Court may withhold the remaining portion of their allowances, either wholly or in part, or even the amount of their retiring pensions; and, in respect to themselves individually, they cannot understand an assumed principle in the same orders, wherein, with advertence to the abolition of the medical contract, the full batta of captains and majors is granted respectively to assistant surgeons and surgeons, as compensation or in lieu of the said contract, while that very compensation is entirely neutralized by another provision of the same order, thus depriving your Memorialists of all indemnification whatever.

The pay-tables of 1796, fixing on a permanent scale the allowances of the Bengal army, were not adopted till after a full discussion of their provisions and ulti

mate sanction of His Majesty's Ministers; consequently, your Memorialists believe, with due deference to your Honourable Court, that no authority, short of that which established the scale of their pay and allowances thirty years ago, can now diminish them a single fraction, and that they are legally secure from any inroad on their income, till their claims are again discussed in the British Parliament, and settled by its decision under the control of the officers of the crown; neither can they imagine that a power temporarily delegated by the Sovereign to a corporate body can diminish the pay of the Officers of a large portion of the integral army of the state (which the Native army of India undoubtedly is) when a like authority is withheld from His Majesty in regard to the army of England.

But waving for the moment all considerations of equity, justice or policy, no stronger argument can be adduced against the diminution of our allowances by the introduction of Half Batta, than that furnished by your Honorable Court; and your Memorialists respectfully solicit reference to your military letter addressed to the Government of Fort St. George, bearing date the 15th September, 1809, where, in the 65th Para, the injustice of such diminution is fully recognized, as will appear by the following extract. "The persons nominated to civil and military employment have entered the services perfectly aware of these inequalities, and are therefore not entitled to expect they should be afterwards removed," and this idea of a general equalization of allowances throughout the three Presidencies, so decidedly and justly resisted at that time by your Honorable Court, as a direct breach of the covenant and mutual stipulations, under which your civil and military offcers were engaged, has now, by the enforcement of the late order of your supreine Government, No. 254, of 29th November last, been fully acted upon; exhibiting an alteration in the sentiments and reasoning of your Honorable Court, so totally at variance with those clearly expressed in 1809, and so injurious in its effects to the interests of your Memorialists, as can be justified by no plea of expediency and necessity, nor reconciled to the most ordinary principle of good faith-while it is impossible to characterize the strange anomaly existing in the said order, where, by the privation of one half of their Batta, the nominal equivalent granted to your Memorialists as a compensation for the loss of the medical contract is withheld from them, even in this, the very order announcing it; and if the admission of your Honorable Court, in the 64th Para, from the same letter," that the style of living among Europeans has gradually adapted itself to the scale of income," were tenable and recognized in 1809, how many thousand times more urgent does it become in its application to the circumstances of the present period, when the actual expenses of the most common necessaries of life, of servants, &c. have trebled or quadrupled. The enormous depreciation of the currency and consequent loss of exchange, losses incurred in houses by abolition of old or formation of new military stations (for which, to whatever amount, no compensatory allowance is ever granted,) duties augmented on articles of every description, and especially the ruinous expenses of travelling, to which all military officers are exposed from the greater extension of territorial possession and increased distance of stations, but to which your Memorialists, as belonging to the whole army, are peculiarly subjected, being frequently called upon, on the shortest notice, to pass from one extremity of the Bengal Presidency to the other, to the detriment of their health, and to the total ruin of their finances; disadvantages which, when combined and maturely consi, dered, not only oppose most forcibly every idea of reduction, but most imperatively eall for an augmentation of their allowances.

To these natural feelings of dissatisfaction which your Memorialists have ventured to express, should it be answered that their further services are not compulsory, and that they are at liberty to withdraw them, we beg to state to your Honorable Court, that such an assumption is totally erroneous, as they have neither realized the amount of the heavy expenses incurred by their early education, &c. or even the means of returning to Europe; but imagining, for an instant, they bad done so, what indemnification would such return be to them for the sacrifice they irrevocably made in entering your service, when, relying on the integrity and justice of your Honorable Court, and on the permanency of the advantages held out to them, they left their native country, their families and connexions, under whose countenance and by whose assistance, they would have been enabled, at that time, to have established themselves in public life, an opportunity now lost to them for

ever-which circumstance alone will doubtless induce your Honorable Court favourably to listen to and speedily to grant the prayer of your Memorialists.

In further illustration of the systematic neglect, and of the very subordinate character in which the medical department of this Presidency is held, may be adduced the total want of patronage in the members of the Medical Board, whose pro fessional abilities, experience in the country, and knowledge of individuals, would, it is supposed, have pointed them out as the most proper distributors of it; but superintendence is rendered nearly nugatory by their inability to reward merit, or encourage talent, thus compelling your Memorialists to court the patronage and support of the military officers commanding Divisions, Brigades, &c. and more especially of the Adjutant General of the army, whose abilities, great and transcendant in their military capacity, can never be increased by a dubious judgment of the comparative merits, and qualifications of medical officers, the operation of which system is highly detrimental to the service generally, but particularly so to the department of your Memorialists, since a struggle for interest and favour supersedes the honest emulation for fame, rank, or emolument.

That this department of your service has been ever and only considered as an inferior and degraded appendage to your civil and military establishments, will appear from the fact that, in the arduous and barrassing campaigns in which your Bengal army has been engaged during the last fifteen years (with two individual exceptions) no public acknowledgement, of any kind, has ever been paid to its members, however great or meritorious their services-however anxious and responsible their duties-to whatever severe and painful trials their feelings may have been subjected! To the due performance of the duties assigned to them, duties in which all personal feelings are merged in the alleviation of suffering humanity, there is a degree of mental satisfaction which no contempt or neglect cau diminish, and the enjoyment of which, is the only reward of your Memorialists; but as men of honorable feeling and liberal education, they are not insensible or culpably indifferent to the approbation of their superiors and associates, whose opinion of them is generally formed, not on their merits (which they cannot appreciate) but on their rank in public estimation; and, in confirmation of these ignominious privations and invidious distinctions having been long and acutely felt by your professional servants, may be incidentally mentioned a well attested fact, that no medical officer in this Presidency, for the last 20 years, has ever sent his son to India in a medical, though many have done so in a military capacity!!

From this detailed statement of their grievances and hardships, and of the disqualifications and disadvantages they suffer, it will be manifest to your Honorable Court, that your Memorialists are an ill-paid, neglected, and degraded class of public servants, and they appeal to the liberality, justice, and honor of the Court, that, when this their true and deplorable condition is examined and reflected on, such a revision may be made in the whole system of the medical department, as will place your Memorialists in that rank in society to which they are entitled, and raise, their allowances to a just scale of indemnification for their service and sacrifices ; and they trust they do not incur the charge of presumption, or of assuming the language of dictation in suggesting the following as a scale consonant to these intentions, and which, in their humble judgment, is the least that can be considered as a fair and adequate remuneration.

Ist. That the junior grade be divided into three classes according to length of service, with proportionate allowances in each; that assistant surgeons (3d class) from their entrance into the service to the expiration of five years, receive each in all situations while actually holding any medical charge, the sum of 400 rupees per mensem, subject to a monthly deduction of 100 rupees previous to his joiuing such charge, or when absent on private affairs or medical certificate.

2d. That from and after five years service assistant surgeon's (2d class) receive for the next five years ensuing, the sum of sonat rupees 600 per mensem, subject to a similar deduction.

3d. That from and aften ten years service, assistant surgeon's (1st class) receive the monthly sum of 800 rupees, till their promotion to the rank of surgeon, subject to the same deduction under similar circumstances.

4th. That a regimental surgeon holding medical charge of a Native cavalry, infantry, or artillery corps, receive in all situations, 1000 rupees per mensem, and