If we merely increase the number of each existing grade, giving a part of these rank above their name and office, we merely multiply evils.

But we will leave this subject for the present, and recur to the general discussion of staff duties.
The following remarks of Jomini on the importance of the staff of an army are worthy of attention.

"A good staff," says he, "is, more than all, indispensable to the constitution of an army; for it must be regarded as the nursery where the commanding general can raise his principal supports--as a body of officers whose intelligence can aid his own.

When harmony is wanting between the genius that commands, and the talents of those who apply his conceptions, success cannot be sure; for the most skilful combinations are destroyed by faults in execution.
Moreover, a good staff has the advantage of being more durable than the genius of any single man; it not only remedies many evils, but it may safely be affirmed that it constitutes for the army the best of all safeguards.

The petty interests of coteries, narrow views, and misplaced egotism, oppose this last position: nevertheless, every military man of reflection, and every enlightened statesman, will regard its truth as beyond all dispute; for a well-appointed staff is to an army what a skilful minister is to a monarchy--it seconds the views of the chief, even though it be in condition to direct all things of itself; it prevents the commission of faults, even though the commanding general be wanting in experience, by furnishing him good councils.