From the political I turn to the purely military side of the Army's history. Treating first of the officers, it has, I think, been sufficiently shown that there were influences enough at work to demoralise them quite apart from any legacies of corruption that they might have inherited from the past. Against their indiscipline and dishonesty George the First seems to have set his face from the very beginning. He had a particular dislike to the system of purchasing and selling commissions. If (so ran his argument) an officer is unfit to serve from his own fault, he ought to be tried and cashiered, if he is rendered incapable by military service, he ought to retire on half-pay; and so firm was the King on this latter point that the Secretary-at-War dared not disobey him.[62] As early, therefore, as in June 1715 the King announced his intention of putting a stop to the practice, and as a first step forbade all sale of commissions except by officers who had purchased, and then only for the price that had originally been paid. One principal cause that prompted him to this decision appears to have been the exorbitant price demanded by colonels, on the plea that they had discharged regimental debts due for the clothing of the men, and suffered loss through the carelessness of agents.[63] It should seem, however, that as the rule applied only to regiments on the British and not to those on the Irish Establishment, the desired reforms were little promoted by this expedient. In 1717, therefore, the King referred the question to the Board of General Officers, with, however, a reservation in favour of sale for the benefit of wounded or superannuated officers, which could not but vitiate the entire scheme. He thought it better, therefore, to regulate that which he could not abolish, and in 1720 issued the first of those tariffs for the prices of commissions which continued to appear in the Queen's Regulations until 1870. At the same time he subjected purchase to certain conditions as to rank and length of service, adding somewhat later that the fact of purchase should carry with it no right to future sale.[64] Evidently ministers kept before his eyes not only the usefulness of the system from a political standpoint, since every officer was bound over in the price of his commission to good behaviour, but still more the impossibility of obtaining from Parliament a vote for ineffective men. They followed, in fact, the precept of Marlborough, and it is hard to say that they were not right.