“_The disorders which these soldiers have, are of a very trifling description, they are considered to render them incapable of serving with their regiments, but they certainly do not incapacitate them from committing outrages of all descriptions on their passage through the country, and in the last movements of the hospitals the soldiers have not only plundered the inhabitants of their property, but the hospital stores which moved with the hospitals, and have sold the plunder. And all these outrages are committed with impunity, no proof can be brought on oath before a court-martial that any individual has committed an outrage, and the soldiers of the army are becoming little better than a band of robbers._” “_I have carried the establishment and authority of the provost-marshal as far as either will go; there are at this moment not less than one provost-marshal, and nineteen assistant provost-marshals, attached to the several divisions of cavalry and infantry and to the hospital stations, to preserve order, but this establishment is not sufficient, and I have not the means of increasing it._” The principal remedies he proposed, were the admitting less rigorous proof of guilt, before courts martial; the forming a military police, _such as the French, and other armies possessed_; the enforcing more attention on the part of the officers to their duties; the increasing the pay and responsibility of the non-commissioned officers, and the throwing upon them the chief care of the discipline. But in treating this part of the subject he broached an opinion which can scarcely be sustained even by his authority. Assuming, somewhat unjustly, that the officers of his army were, from consciousness of like demerit, generally too lenient in their sentences on each other for neglect of duty, he says, “I am inclined to entertain the opinion that in the British army duties of inspection and control over the conduct and habits of the soldiers, the performance of which by somebody is the only effectual check to disorder and all its consequences, are imposed upon the subaltern officers of regiments, which duties British officers, being of the class of gentlemen in society, and being required to appear as such, have never performed _and which they will never perform_. It is very necessary, however, that the duties should be performed by somebody, and for this reason, and having observed the advantage derived in the guards, from the respectable body of non-commissioned officers in those regiments, who perform all the duties required from subalterns in the marching regiments, I had suggested to your lordship the expediency of increasing the pay of the non-commissioned officers in the army.”