I should greatly fear, that it cannot now be safe to employ--at least in some of our West India Islands--corps composed of Blacks; I must therefore beg leave to recommend, that regiments should be raised by bounty in the United Kingdom, for service in that part of the world, and in some of our other foreign possessions; and none of our regular regiments should be required to serve there, but in cases of emergency; and they ought always to be immediately re-called from such countries, when the cause for which they were sent out had been removed. Such an arrangement would obviate many objections to the plan of the ballot, and would be found the means (so desirable an object in these times) of keeping our regiments in a very high state of discipline and efficiency; for they would be then very superior in these respects to any troops we can now, or even could avail ourselves of; and if what I suggest be adopted, a vast saving of expense to the country would be the consequence, which is incurred in constantly relieving the number of regiments we are obliged to have always stationed abroad. In order to shew in the strongest manner, how serious a drawback such prolonged service in tropical climates is to the British army, I shall here take the liberty of stating, that in the year 1820, the regiment to which I then belonged arrived in the East, complete in officers and men. It lately returned to England, without having lost, I believe, any individual in action; but the climate alone had produced great changes in its ranks; and although volunteers from other corps were added to it, and many recruits had been sent out during the period of its absence from home, to keep up its strength, yet when it returned it could scarcely be called a regiment. Some of the officers had certainly exchanged into other corps at home, or had sold out; but only one or two reached England of all those who had embarked with it. This is most injurious to the discipline and efficiency of our army; for, according to present arrangements, and from unavoidable circumstances, a corps can only be at home for so short a period, that there is not sufficient time allowed to bring it into that state in which it ought to be for service; and when regiments arrive in foreign stations, they are too often so much detached in small bodies, that notwithstanding all the zeal and exertions of officers, a certain degree of relaxation in discipline necessarily takes place, and generally increases the longer a regiment, always hoping to be re-called--is kept abroad. This feeling, or anxiety about home, at least to any considerable extent, could not be supposed to exist in Colonial corps; for those who voluntarily entered them, would have, in a great measure, made up their minds to consider such foreign stations as their homes, at all events, for a certain number of years, which both officers and men can, in most instances, contrive to pass both profitably and agreeably.