system is afforded us a little further on in
the same pamphlet, where Captain Spearman
states that, "as an introduction to staff
employment, the officers of the army have long
since abandoned the senior department at
Sandhurst in hopeless despair." The writer
then asks "to what is the disinclination, not
to say repugnance, so generally evinced by
British officers to devote themselves to the
study of war as a science to be attributed?
Clearly to the want of due encouragement—
to the practical denial of the usual reward of
such devotion and toil."

"Staff appointments" (in the English army),
says Colonel Beamish in his work mentioned
above, "are made without any reference to
scientific qualification—because the wish of
a lord is more potent than the judgment of
a professor; and the most distinguished
Sandhurst students have been left to look in vain
for congenial professional employment, and
some reward for their many hours of labour
and anxious preparation. . . . How different,"
continues the same writer, "is the practice
with our enlightened neighbours! Staff
employment in France is the reward of merit
alone. It is sought for by the éite of the
army, and obtained only by the severest
study, and the most indisputable proofs of
the possession of the highest degree of
professional excellence and general intelligence.
Thus are formed those well-instructed
officers who constitute the état-major of the
French army, and afterwards become their
most distinguished generals of division and
brigade."

If more evidence were wanting to show
what are considered the necessary qualifications
for a staff-officer in the English service,
a perusal of the list of lords, honourables,
baronets, and sons of wealthy influential
commoners, who form the staff of the
Crimean army, would be quite enough to set
the question at rest. With us interest—as
with the French merit—is what the
authorities make the sine qua non for those who
aspire to the staff. The consequence to
England has been but too visible since the
struggle with Russia commenced. With as
brave regimental officers and soldiers as ever
were sent forth by this or any other country,
our army has never been able to effect half what
it would have effected with proper organisation
and efficient leaders. In France, what the
École Impériale d'Application d'État-Major
effects in training for the staff, regimental
service does in preparing for the command of
brigades, divisions, and armies. With a
highly-educated staff it is impossible either
to want competent generals, or to have every
department of the service in that state of
utter confusion which has so sadly distinguished
our army since it first embarked for
the East. Our general officers, commanders
of division, brigadiers, adjutants-general,
quartermasters-general, aides-de-camp, and
others, are only now commencing to learn
their various military duties with the army.
Should peace be proclaimed to-morrow, and
Europe enjoy twenty or thirty years respite
from bloodshed, those officers who may then
hold commissions in the service will, in the
event of war, (our system remaining
unchanged: which God forbid!) have in like
manner to learn all their duties. In France,
on the contrary, the government maintains
its officers as we do our muskets or big
guns—fit for immediate service in any part of
the world.

                    CHIPS.

      THE RUSSIAN BUDGET.

WE feel the cost of war, and know that it
must be absolutely more expensive to the
Russian than it is to our own. How long is
the Russian pocket? how strong is the
Russian arm? are very natural questions. A
German gentleman in the United States, long
resident in Russia, has published a report
upon the subject not altogether tallying with,
some other reports that come to us from the
Old World by way of the New. The account
Mr. Donai gives is nearly to the following
effect:

Fifty millions of Russian subjects yield to
their Czar not more than a revenue of twenty
millions sterling. More cannot be extracted
from the people; and, out of this, a large army
of soldiers is not, it stands to reason, too
liberally paid. Every member of the Russian
population, taking one with another, pays
eight shillings a year for being ruled
imperially, with little or nothing more to pay for
local government of any kind. In the same way,
every Austrian pays twelve shillings; every
Prussian eighteen shillings; every French-
man forty-four shillings; and every English-
man forty-eight shillings to the resources of
the nation, besides considerable sums towards
local expenditure. Public expenses suggest,
roughly, a nation's wealth, and Russia, judged
by this test, is inhabited by a people
manifestly poor. Whenever war arises, therefore,
the Czar goes abroad to borrow, and there is,
every year, a deficiency in the imperial budget.
If all the European money-lenders buttoned
up their pockets closely, Russian war must
cease. How these loan contractors will ever
get back more than interest on capital, it
is not easy to see; for, if borrowing continues,
even the receipt of interest by them may
become precarious.

The only direct tax in Russia is the poll
tax, yielding less than three-and-a-half
millions sterling; add to it the license-duty paid
by merchants and tradesmen, and the sum
becomes five millions. We speak only of
pounds sterling, because the value of sums
stated in silver roubles (the national
denomination in which Russian accounts are
computed) is less clearly perceived. The
customs' duties yield five millions more to the