INSPECTING COMMANDERS (IRELAND).
QUESTION OF SUPERCESSION.
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COPIES OF REPORTS.
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PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT BY HER MAJESTY'S COMMAND.
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Memorial, No, 22.
Showeth,— That we have had under consideration a Report of the Comptroller-general of Coast Guard, stating, that in consequence of the disadvantages and discourage¬ ments under which officers of the Royal Navy employed in the Coast Guard service under this department at present labour, from the principle some time since laid down by the Board of Admiralty, whereby those officers are not con¬ sidered eligible for advancement in their profession on account of services per¬ formed whilst employed in the Coast Guard service, however meritorious the same may have been, the Comptroller-general had lately waited upon His Royal Highness the Lord High Admiral, in the hope of obtaining a reconsidera¬ tion of this subject, and represented the advantages which might reasonably be anticipated from placing the officers employed in the Coast Guard service on an equal footing as to their professional prospects with those employed on a precisely similar service in Kent and Sussex, whom it has not been unfrequent to reward in this manner for distinguished good conduct.
That His Royal Highness was pleased to assent entirely to the propriety of this representation, and appeared fully disposed to take the necessary measures in consequence, but commanded the Comptroller-general previously to state that His Royal Highness considered the present mode of selecting officers of the Royal Navy for the Coast Guard in Ireland and Scotland should be assimilated to that already established in England, and upon this alteration being acceded to, His Royal Highness would be ready to consider officers in the Royal Navy serving in the Coast Guard of the United Kingdom equally eligible for advancement, in the event of special merit and good conduct, with those similarly situated in other branches of his Majesty's service.
That in our Memorial to your Lordships of the 8th February 1825, No.
253, submitting, for your Lordships' consideration and approbation, several propositions which the Comptroller-general of the Coast Guard, upon his inspection of the force in Scotland and Ireland, had suggested, as well for rendering the Coast Guard service more efficient as for making it interchangeable and applicable to all purposes of that service generally, we recommended, with a view of obviating the inconvenience experienced by confining the nomination to any particular part of the United Kingdom, that all nomination of parties to the Coast Guard service should in future be general, instead of being as at piesent specially confined either to England and Scotland or Ireland; and we at the same time expressed our opinion that an uniformity of practice in the mode of appointing inspecting com¬ manders would be most essential; observing that the selection of those officers for Scotland and Ireland was not necessarily made from the naval service, while in England, officers of the navy were exclusively selected, agreeably to your Lord¬ ships' minute of the 15th January 1822 ; and we observed that a similar diversity of practice prevailed in regard to the nomination of chief officers.
In Scotland and Ireland civilians are usually appointed, whilst in England lieutenants of the navy had been since 1822 exclusively selected for those appointments, thereby securing, so far as England was concerned, that nautical experience indispensable to the situation, and providing also against the introduction of persons whose previous connexions and habits might not have qualified them for offices of this description.
That in addition to the advantages above alluded to, which would result from an uniformity of practice in the mode of appointing officers to the Coast Guard 492.
A service,
