APPENDIX.
Substance of Communications addressed to the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, respecting the Strength of the Garrisons in the Colonies.
AUSTRALIA.
The New South Wales Command, comprises New South Wales-Van Diemans Land and Western Australia. The total number of troops on the station and on their passage, is stated in the annexed Horse Guards memorandum to amount to 3,675 men.
The force was increased to that amount in 1834, on the earnest representation, both of Sir R. Bourke and of the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemans Land, as to the inadequacy of the force in that command, to provide for the safety of the colonists. A Battalion was then added, but Sir R. Bourke represented that from the then recent reduction in the strength of regiments, he could not calculate on a greater increase than about 416 Rank and File, and requested that he might be relieved from detaching two Companies to Western Australia. In consequence of this representation, it was proposed by the General Com- manding-in-Chief to supply such detachment from the Regiment at St. Helena; but that arrangement was never carried into effect. Again in the year 1835, in reply to a circular despatch transmitting the report of the Select Committee of the House Commons on military expenditure, Sir R. Bourke stated that neither in the troops nor in the staff of that command, was it possible to make the slightest reduction: and he added that the strength of the former would on the contrary require to be increased, if the Government continued to send out convicts in such numbers as theretofore. He again pressed to be relieved from furnishing two Companies for Western Australia. The colonists of Western Australia have strongly urged an increase of the military force in that colony, and Governor Sir J. Stirling backed the application. It has, however, been refused, and they have been told that they must look to the formation of a local corps, as the means of internal protection. It would, however, be impossible at present to withdraw any portion of the troops from thence, without exposing the colonists to great danger from the attacks of the Aborigines.
CEYLON.
In a dispatch dated the 6th June, 1838, Mr. Stewart Mackenzie states, that he has no difficulty in declaring that Ceylon does not require four European regiments, and a native regiment, 1,600 strong with a proportionate force of artillery and engineers-but that two of the European regiments and half the artillery and engineers, with the more expensive portion of the general staff might easily be spared, as they are required for no colonial purpose whatever.
Lord Hill has represented to Lord Glenelg, that the military force at Ceylon, consisted at the date of the last returns-March 1838, of
Royal Artillery
Royal Engineers
EUROPEAN.
(a few officers only)
18th Regiment of Foot
Rank and File.
116
58th
61st
90th
471
440
439
46)
1,811
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