In the month of October of the same year, Lieut.-General Ralph Darling addressed a letter to Colonel Lindesay, to ascertain if the immediate services of Captain John Douglas Forbes could be dispensed with by the regiment, as it was his wish to place him in command of the mounted police; to which a reply was sent by Colonel Lindesay, stating his consent to Captain Forbes being withdrawn from his regimental duties; “for that, although he could ill be spared, yet he did not wish to deprive the colonial government of the services of an officer who, he had every reason to believe, would prove both valuable and efficient.” The result fully realized his anticipations; and on the 16th of October, Captain Forbes was by a general order placed in command of this corps; a body of men drawn in equal numbers from the regiments in garrison, and mounted by government, for the more effectually assisting of the civil power, by dispersing them over the various settled parts of the colony. They had, at the time of Captain Forbes’s appointment, no recognized commanding-officer, but were nominally under the superintendence of the Major of Brigade, whose various avocations rarely allowed him to examine into their interior economy; consequently, their discipline had become relaxed, and their duties were but too often performed with carelessness. Soon after Captain Forbes assumed the command, a manifest change took place; the mounted police rapidly became an efficient and highly disciplined body of men, and their utility and zeal in the discharge of their duty were universally acknowledged. [Sidenote: 1831.] New colours were presented to the THIRTY-NINTH by Lieut.-General Ralph Darling, in the Barrack Square of Sydney, on the 16th of May 1831, being the anniversary of the battle of _Albuhera_, in which engagement the second battalion of the regiment had twenty years before distinguished itself. On this occasion the following speech was delivered by the Lieut.-General, the ceremony of consecration having been first performed by the Venerable Archdeacon Broughton:-- “THIRTY-NINTH! It is highly gratifying to me to present you, on the part of your Colonel, with these colours, henceforth the proud record of your general and distinguished services.