On the 5th of March it was resolved to send the Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third Foot, completed by drafts from the new independent companies, to join the Duke as a brigade under Major-general Ralph Abercromby. These regiments, however, were subject to the same instructions as the Guards, namely, to remain within immediate reach of their transports in case their services should be required elsewhere. Their quality was such that the Adjutant-general felt constrained to apologise for them both to Abercromby and to the Duke of York. “I am afraid,” he wrote to the Duke, “that you will not reap the advantage that you might have expected from the brigade of the Line just sent over to you, as so considerable a part of it is composed of nothing but undisciplined and raw recruits; and how they are to be disposed of until they can be taught their business I am at a loss to imagine.... I was not consulted upon the subject until it was too late to remedy the evil, but I hope that my remonstrances will be of some use in the modelling of troops for the Continent in future.” ◆April 1.◆ It need hardly be added that, on their arrival in Holland, two out of the three battalions were found utterly unfit for service, the new recruits being old men and weakly boys, worse than the worst that had been accepted even at the period of greatest exhaustion during the American War. To send them on active service was, therefore, simply waste of money.[106] But this was only one of the evils which ensued because an extremely ignorant civilian was too vain to consult his military advisers before giving military orders. Any soldier at the War Office could have told him that the method of raising independent companies to recruit existing regiments had been found wasteful and unsatisfactory in the past; and, indeed, at this very time the Chief Secretary Cooke wrote to him from Ireland a strong protest against the whole system. It was expensive, because it meant the provision of half-pay for their officers as soon as the men had been drafted out; it was unfair to old subalterns, because they were passed over by boys who by good fortune had raised recruits cheaply. It produced a bad class of recruit, because these young officers were poor judges of men; and finally it encouraged desertion, for the crimps, so long as they poured a certain number of recruits into the depots by a certain time, cared not the least whether they deserted afterwards. Nor was Cooke content only to criticise, for he produced an alternative plan for allowing each of the fourteen battalions in Ireland to raise two additional companies of one hundred men apiece, and for granting to the commanding officers the privilege of recommending officers for them. The scheme was approved and was found to be most successful; but it was not introduced into England, where, on the contrary, the number of independent companies was still further increased.[107]