When Sam Rice entered the army he paid £450 for his first commission as ensign in an infantry regiment; and the regulation prices paid to Government at that time by officers of infantry on promotion were as follows: to lieutenant, £250; captain, £1100; major, £1400; lieut.-colonel, £1300. Consequently, by the time an officer had reached the rank of lieut.-colonel, he had paid to Government altogether £4500. But if he could not find the money to purchase any step, it was open to him to purchase promotion to the half-pay list, at a considerably reduced price, subsequently exchanging or purchasing back to full pay, if he desired to do so. Eventually, on retirement, the officer received from Government a lump sum equivalent to the value of his commission, so that he got back the sums which he had expended. This was termed Retirement by the Sale of Commissions, but the regulations varied from time to time, and later on lieutenant-colonels were given the choice of taking the lump sum, or of retiring on full pay. The above is a brief outline of the purchase system, in so far as transactions between officers and the Government were concerned, but many and various complications arose from the over-regulation prices of commissions, with which the Government had nothing to do. These transactions were carried out among the officers of the regiment, with the assistance of the regimental agents, and the object of them was to maintain a healthy flow of promotion by buying out the senior officers. Death was the only other way of displacing them, for there was no regulation by which an officer was forced to give up the command of a regiment after holding it for a certain length of time, and no age limit for any other officers. Every regiment appears to have had its own recognised tariff, depending principally on the purses of the officers; thus the over-regulation price of, say, a lieutenant-colonelcy of a cavalry regiment was considerably higher than that of an infantry regiment, and a lieutenant-colonel would not retire unless the officers junior to him subscribed the sum which he considered his rank and appointment were worth. In such a case the procedure would be something as follows: the lieutenant-colonel would name his price to the senior major, who would then see how the amount could be made up by voluntary subscriptions from such officers as would benefit by the retirement of the lieutenant-colonel. The senior major would, of course, pay the largest amount, and the senior captain and senior lieutenant would probably subscribe handsomely, if they intended to purchase their respective steps. It frequently happened, however, that officers could not afford to purchase their promotion, in which case a junior officer could purchase over the heads of his seniors, the latter deciding to wait for a death vacancy, for which no over-regulation money was required.