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a modification of existing Regulations as to leave of absence and service for Pensions.
1. Your Lordship in reply to that Memorial expressed your willingness to grant vacation leave from six to eight weeks in each year, or sixteen weeks once in two years.
2. It is true, however, that I am now enabled to adopt either arrangement as may be rendered most expedient by the circumstances of each case.
3. In so doing, Your Lordship appears to be under the impression that the Civil Officers here have thereby obtained a greater advantage than they had previously possessed: in point of fact, they had already been in enjoyment of a more extensive privilege under the Despatch of the Duke of Newcastle, 19th January 1854, which gave them one month every year and three months the following year, or four months every second year.
4. Your Lordship's despatch likewise intimated that you had in some degree anticipated the wish of the Civil Officers as to an alteration in the Pension Minute and hoped to communicate by an early date the decision of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury on that point.
5. I therefore kept back Your Lordship's despatch for some months in the expectation that I should be informed of the decision arrived at by Her Majesty's Treasury, but eventually judged it expedient to communicate the views of Your Lordship so far as they related to...