“The Government also desires to express the feeling which it entertains of the readiness which Lieutenant-Colonel Elliot, and the Officers commanding detachments under him, have always displayed to aid the Colony as far as lay in their power.
“The Government also desires to record its appreciation of the uniform courtesy and consideration which they have experienced on the part of Lieutenant-Colonel Elliot in their communications with him through His Excellency the Governor.
“(Signed) William Fox,
“Premier.”
By the beginning of March, 1870, the various detachments of the regiment had settled down in their new stations, but they were not destined long to enjoy the pleasures of life in the capitals of the Australian colonies,[223] for very soon came orders for the regiment to return to England. The policy of withdrawing all Imperial troops from New Zealand had been carried out. It was now Australia’s turn to be denuded of her garrison, and in August 1870, after hundreds of men had taken their discharges in order to settle in Australasia, the Royal Irish embarked for Plymouth. The sailing ship Silver Eagle left Sydney on the 21st of August with the four headquarter companies; Lieutenant-Colonel Elliot was in command, and with him were one captain, four subalterns, two surgeons, and one hundred and thirty-five other ranks. On board the sailing ship Corona, which left Melbourne about the same time, were Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Rocke and two other field-officers, five captains, nine subalterns, and two hundred and forty-six other ranks. The Corona arrived at Plymouth on November 16; the Silver Eagle made so long a voyage round Cape Horn that before she reached port on December 5th, it was currently reported that she had been lost at sea.
The Australians were profoundly moved when the Royal Irish left their shores. The XVIIIth was already very popular, and apart from this personal feeling, the settlers were deeply wounded at the removal of this, the last British regiment of the garrison of Australasia. While all men regarded this step as the breaking of one of the few visible links between the mother country and her offshoots in the southern hemisphere, many pessimists hinted that the policy of the Home government was intended to force all the colonies into a declaration of independence. When the Corona sailed from Melbourne fifty thousand people crowded to the beach to wave a sad farewell to the XVIIIth, gloomily comparing the departure of the regiment with the abandonment of Britain by the Roman legions. Happily these prophets of evil were mistaken. The loyalty of the colonies to the Empire is unimpaired, and the tie of sentiment has been strengthened by the presence in three African campaigns of large bodies of volunteers from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Imperial troops in quarrels with which the colonists were concerned solely as members of the British race. Though the offer of two thousand Australasian militia and volunteers to serve against the Boers in the war of 1881 was refused by Mr Gladstone’s government, four years later eight hundred men from New South Wales were fighting at Suakim, and four hundred Canadian voyageurs were steering whale-boats upon the Nile in the expedition towards Khartoum: while in the recent struggle with the Boers for the possession of South Africa, nearly thirty thousand men from Greater Britain represented the oversea provinces of the Empire in the army of the old country.
When the second battalion landed in England, it was quartered at Devonport, where the energies of the officers and non-commissioned officers were devoted to welding into shape the recruits enlisted to fill its depleted ranks. These youths were of poor physique and small stature, and only three hundred were finally accepted as suitable for the Service, but good food and systematic training did wonders for them: in a year their average height had increased an inch, while they had grown two inches wider round the chest. The burden of drilling and disciplining this mass of raw material fell upon the adjutant, Lieutenant H. B. Moore; his success was so conspicuous that when he left the army in 1873, Lieutenant-Colonel S. Wilson, who in 1871 had succeeded Colonel Elliot in command, warmly thanked him for his work in a regimental order. During the six years spent by the battalion at various garrison towns in England nothing of interest occurred, except that the Royal Irish were represented in the Ashantee war by Major T. D. Baker and Lieutenant I. W. Graves, both of whom were mentioned in despatches.[224] In June, 1876, the retirement of Colonel Wilson placed Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. Daniel in command; and in the following month began a tour of duty in Ireland, as barren of events as had been that in England. The battalion was at Kilkenny in the spring of 1878, when in anticipation of a possible war with Russia part of the reserve was called out, and four hundred men from the Kilkenny and Wexford militia were poured into the ranks of the Royal Irish, whose officers led a strenuous life during the three months of the embodiment. On the death of Colonel Daniel in May, 1882, Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Gregorie arranged an exchange with Lieutenant-Colonel M. J. R. M‘Gregor, first battalion, and was gazetted to the command of the second battalion on September 14, 1878. After passing three years in Ireland, the home battalion of the Royal Irish spent two years at Aldershot, and then was moved to Chatham where the marching-in state showed a strength of 15 officers, 37 sergeants, 12 drummers and 356 rank and file. Here it remained until August, 1882, when it embarked for Egypt on active service.