II. dispute. This alteration in the position of the question CHAP. was due in the first instance to Somers' letter, but it was also attributable to the legislation which Parliament adopted after the Revolution of 1688. The great grievances, of which the people had complained in the days of the Stuarts, were divisible into four heads. It was asserted that the crown had raised an army without the consent of Parliament: that in defiance of the Petition of Right the troops had been quartered on the people; that they had been governed by a peculiar code of laws which had never received the sanction of Parliament; and that they had been employed to overawe the legislature. The first and fourth of these grievances were obviously removed by Somers' policy. An army, raised with the sanction of Parliament and dependent on its bounty, could not possibly be used by the crown to control the legislature. The third of the four grievances was terminated by an admirable expedient. A Mutiny Act was passed for the first time in 1689; but the Mutiny Act was only passed for a single year. The Crown obtained the requisite power for governing the armed force which it was authorised to form; but the legislature reserved to itself the right of terminating these powers at a short notice. The reluctance with which the English still regarded the formation of a standing army made it necessary, for a century after Somers' time, to quarter the troops on the people. Parliament refused to provide permanent barracks for the troops, because the provision of permanent barracks appeared to contemplate the existence of a permanent army. Even so late as 1812 the erection of some necessary barracks exposed the Tory ministry to unmerited obloquy. Though England had acquired possessions in every part of the world, though she was engaged in the greatest of modern wars, the English were reluctant to admit the necessity for a standing army. While, however, the country was protesting against the institution of a standing army, the standing army was continually increasing in size and importance. Charles II.'s slender force of guards and garrisons was being gradually developed into a considerable army. William III. had 65,000 men in arms in 1691, and before the conclusion of the war had 90,000 men engaged. The army was reduced after the peace of Ryswick to 19,000 men, 12,000 of whom were for service in Ireland, and 7,000 in Great Britain. During the succeeding century the British army served in almost every portion of the globe; but the armies with which Britain achieved her most glorious successes, were frequently composed of foreign troops. At the conclusion of each war the army was reduced to the slenderest dimensions. At the commencement of the revolutionary war there were not 18,000 men employed in the United Kingdom. About the same number were scattered through the numerous colonies of the British Empire. The system, under which the army was administered, reflected only too accurately the conduct of the Government in other respects. Birth and favour were the sure passports to distinction, and the common soldiers, treated with the utmost severity, had little but their pay to look forward to. Up to 1806 the troops were enlisted for life, and in 1815 old-fashioned politicians still doubted the expediency of the shorter service which had been at that time introduced by Windham. The men were drawn from the lowest classes of the population; they were occasionally taken from the hulks. While they were retained in the service they were subject to the severest discipline.1 Men literally died under the lash, or from the effects of it. When they received their discharge, they found little sympathy among the population. It's us as pays they chaps!' was the remark with which the regiment in which Lord Albemarle was serving 2 was received on its 1 Romilly, vol. iii. p. 18. Fifty Years of my Life, vol. ii. p. 68. 2 II. return from Waterloo. Wordsworth has related, in the CHAP. 'Prelude,' his finding a discharged soldier, utterly destitute, painfully endeavouring to find his way home to his distant friends. Every Englishman was proud of the glorious triumphs which the British soldier had achieved. But the British soldier was the very last person whom any Englishman desired to take either into his household or into his employment. The unpopularity and distrust with which the private soldiers were regarded, did not affect the officers. The military profession was the most gentlemanlike in which it was possible for anyone to engage. A boy with brains might possibly be sent to the Bar; a boy with interest might do very well for the Church; a boy with land might hope to represent the family borough. But a boy who had not brains, interest, or land, was generally sent into the army. If he were killed he required no further provision; if he survived his comrades the pecuniary value of his commission became a small fortune. Boys, it must be remembered, who had any interest at all, did not starve for many months on the pay of a subaltern. Sir Charles Stewart was by no means the most unduly favoured of his generation, and his career is not a bad example of the promotion which young men of good family might obtain in the British army at the close of the eighteenth century. Sir Charles Stewart was an ensign at thirteen, a lieutenant at fifteen, a captain at sixteen, a major at seventeen, and lieutenant-colonel at less than nineteen years of age. When he received his first commission he was an Eton boy, and no one thought it necessary to take the boy from school because he happened to be receiving pay in his country's service.1 1 Vide for this section of the work Clode's Military Forces of the Crown; Moyle's Argument against a Standing Army; Trenchard's History of Standing Armies, published in State Tracts, published in the reign of Wil- CHAP. II. The navy was perhaps a less popular profession among the highest classes than the army. It was officered in The Navy. the main from the upper middle class. Parents hesitated to part from their sons at the tender age at which boys went to sea; and they, therefore, preferred a service in which the severance from home ties was usually deferred to a later age. There was, moreover, no purchase system in the navy. The rich man in this profession had no undue advantage over the poor one; and the wealthy preferred a calling n which a full purse was likely to be an advantage. If, however, the army were the more popular profession in the very highest ranks of society, the navy was much more popular among the British people. Three out of every four of the population had probably never seen the sea; but three out of every four entertained the most sincere conviction that at sea they were invincible. Campbell really only expressed the deliberate belief of the nation when he declared Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep: Her march is o'er the mountain waves, The country gentleman, sheltered in his patrimonial es- Yet England, at the time of the great war, had not been a formidable naval power for more than two centuries. In the reign of the Tudors the daring of her sons had carried her flag to the remotest territories of the globe. But the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had vied with the British; and England possessed no naval force which could compare with the fleets of Spain. The admirable skill and bravery of the British sailors had enabled our English fleet to contend with the formidable Armada. But, though the engagement was a glorious one for the British navy, the destruction of the Armada was rather due to the storms of heaven than the bolts of the English. A century later the Dutch for a time obtained undisputed mastery of the Channel; and, though Blake subsequently achieved a memorable victory over Van Tromp, De Ruyter in 1667 sailed up the Thames, and insulted the capital of the feeble monarch who disgraced the throne of England. In the war which succeeded the Revolution of 1688-9 the French were at first able to contend on equal terms with the combined fleets of Holland and England; but the great victory of Russell off La Hogue destroyed the naval power of France; and with the commencement of the eighteenth century the English commenced their glorious course of unbroken success at sea. The War of the Succession produced Benbow and Rooke; the war with Spain, Sir George Byng; the Spanish war, Hawke and Anson; the American war, Parker and Rodney. The Spanish and the French were swept from the seas by these great commanders; and the English, used to a career of constant success, shot the captains who hesitated to support their admiral, or the admiral who hesitated to engage the enemy. The triumphs of the British sailors had been great, but the lustre which surrounded Hawke and Rodney was to pale before the rising of an even greater luminary. France twice succeeded in combining the navies of the world against this country, and twice the mighty armaments were destroyed by the British sailors. Howe defeated the French off Ushant, Jervis the Spanish at St. Vincent, Duncan the Dutch off Camperdown. The marvellous successes of Nelson confirmed the impression, which these victories had produced, that the British sailor was invincible; and the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar made this country undisputed mistress CHAP. II. |