ABSTRACT
The Edward Cardwell reforms were a vital part of that ministry's legislation to diminish the influence of privilege and acknowledge the place of merit and efficiency in the professions, the civil service, education, and the army. Through all the military changes after the Crimean War there was little concern that the army should be given a positive and fundamental place in English society. In 1871 Cardwell successfully limited the tenure of the office to five years and brought the Military Secretary more directly into a separate division under the Secretary of State. Army reforms in Britain could be directed only in part to facing a European threat, or to making more flexible British imperial responsibilities. Cardwell had to present the abolition of purchase as a bargain, and his success tended to enforce the assumption that once abolition was a fact and its cost approved in Parliament, the reform had gone as far as it could.
