to
discharge the bills, so much was his day filled up with doing eternal
sums about the stoppages in the pay of the patients. There were thirteen
kinds of stoppages in the army, three of which were for the sick in
hospital: the paymaster could never be quite certain that he had
reckoned rightly with every man to the last penny; the men were never
satisfied; and the confusion was endless. The commissariat, the
purveyor, and the paymaster were all kept waiting to get their books
made up, while soldiers were working the sums,--being called from their
proper business to help about the daily task of the stoppages. Why there
should not be one uniform stoppage out of the pay of men in hospital no
person of modern ideas could see; and the paymaster's toils would
have been lessened by more than one-half, if he had had to reckon the
deduction from the patients' pay at threepence or fourpence each, all
round, instead of having to deal with thousands per day individually,
under three kinds of charge upon the pay.

The commandant's post was the hardest,--he being supposed to control
every province, and have every official under his orders, and yet being
powerless in regard to two or three departments, the business of which
he did not understand. The officers of those departments went each his
own way; and all unity of action in the establishment was lost. This is
enough to say of the old methods.

In the place of them, a far simpler system was proposed at the end of
the war. The eternal dispute as to whether the commandant should be
military or medical, a soldier or a civilian, was set aside by the
decision that he should be simply the ablest administrator that could
be found, and be called the Governor, to avoid the military title. Why
there should be any military management of men who are sick as men, and
not as soldiers, it is difficult to see; and when the patients are about
to leave the hospital, a stated supervision from the adjutant-general's
department is all that can be required. Thus is all the jealousy between
military and medical authority got rid of. The Governor's authority must
be supreme, like that of the commandant of a fortress, or the commander
of a ship. He will not want to meddle in the doctors' professional
business; and in all else he is to be paramount,--being himself
responsible to the War-Office. The office, as thus declared, is
equivalent to three of the nine old ones, namely, the Commandant, the
Adjutan