Such was the military domestic life of these years before the Mutiny; and in such a question the change was so gradual that it is hard to say when it really came. After 1858 there were many alterations in the inner life of the army, doubtless; but before then, notwithstanding the much-abused system of purchase, officers lived apparently less extravagantly than they do now. Modern extravagance is due, no doubt, to the general increase of luxury among all classes; but it is curious to read, in an official blue-book of the early fifties, Lieutenant-Colonel Adams’ evidence, in which he states: “Very many men never had a farthing in the regiment which I first joined, when we were quartered at Plymouth with a regiment of the Guards. There were people of all ranks there; there were guardsmen and cavalrymen. Colonel Stewart, the son of the famous philosopher Dugald Stewart, was a man of property. And people not only lived there without a farthing beside their pay, but our establishment was so good that frequently it has been remarked to me by officers of the Guards, ‘All your people are men of property.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I wish they were, but most of them get nothing beside their pay.’” It is strange to read opinions so much at variance with those of the bulk of the officers to-day. He did not think that the poorer men got into debt more readily than those with good allowances, which “stimulated them to keep horses and get into racing.” The whole style of living in the army must have been widely different from what it is now. Sir Howard Douglas’s evidence was: “When I first entered the service, the officers’ mess was very much what the sergeants’ mess is now. Subalterns could live on their pay, and did in every regiment live on their pay.” This statement, however, seems to refer to the days of the Peninsular War, and not to the long peace that followed it. With greater wealth in the country came also among all classes greater luxury, though possibly by slow degrees. General Wetherall, however, though he “knew a great many examples of men who had passed, and had been many years in the army without a shilling besides their pay, and who had saved money upon it,” considered a young officer should have “a minimum of £60 and a maximum of £100 per annum in addition to his pay.” Colonel Adams gave as his opinion: “You can never get one person out of fifty to enter into any studies whatever when once they have got their commission.” This was the general feeling during the period from 1825 to 1858. There is no doubt that the Crimean War first, and the Mutiny finally, altered much of this; but the change was very gradual none the less.