Only one or two points remain to be noticed. First, the amalgamation of the Royal Irish Artillery was contemplated as early as 1788, although it did not take place until after the Union in 1801. The delay was mainly caused by the protest of the officers of the Royal Artillery, who would have suffered greatly from supersession,--the promotion in the Irish corps having been much more rapid than in that from which it sprang. Amalgamation must always produce this supersession to a certain extent; and the Board listened to the remonstrances, and deferred the incorporation of the Irish Artillery for some years. About the same date that this question was being discussed, a long petition was forwarded from Gibraltar, in which the officers of the Royal Artillery there stationed pointed out how much better the position had become of officers in the Royal Engineers of the same standing as themselves, than their own. The wording of the petition was faulty, and its arguments were unsound; thus giving the Master-General an opportunity, of which he availed himself, to administer a dignified rebuke to the malcontents. On one point, however, he admitted the force of their complaint. The rank of Major had been abolished in the Royal Engineers, its holders being made Lieutenant-Colonels, and thus obtaining a decided advantage over their contemporaries in [Sidenote: Duke of Richmond, 10 March, 1788.] the Artillery. “This difference,” wrote the Master-General, “and there being no rank of Major, is, I admit, an advantage in point of rank in favour of the Engineers. The reason of the rank of Major being suppressed in the Corps of Engineers was that there were no troops belonging to them to be commanded in Battalions, and therefore there could be no use for an officer of that description.” In the year 1827, the rank of Regimental Major was abolished in the Royal Artillery, its holders being made Lieutenant-Colonels, but with Majors’ pay; and in the year 1872, the rank of Major was substituted for that of First Captain, on account of the responsibility attached to the command of a Battery of Artillery.