Originally published in Temple Bar–A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers (Ward and Lock) vol.1 #1 (Dec 1860).
If Wellington of the iron hand could have been amongst us in the flesh, and could have scanned with his eagle eye the battalions of the citizen army in Hyde Park last summer, would not the sight have called up the wrinkle of a smile in that calm impassive face? would not a new throb of patriotism have started at his heart of hearts, and surprised the conqueror of the great Napoleon into retracting for once in his life his opinion, that "the greatest scamps make the best soldiers"? Out of compliment to the volunteers, the great Duke would have been compelled to surrender his sagacious mot. We fancy that even the Duke's own 33d, the "Bengal Tigers," the "18th Royal Irish," or any other of our braves, the terror of their enemies, are not ambitious to sustain their traditional character exactly in this sense. The gentle youth,—the "curled darlings" of the salons,—after forty years of peaceful luxury and refinement, did not come off badly at Inkermann. Indeed, there would not be the smallest difficulty in showing that heroism and all that we call "pluck" burns as fiercely as ever amongst us; while all that we call "blackguardism," if not actually smothered, is no longer gloried in as it was when, for example, Picton told his men they were the greatest blackguards in the army. The stern plain-spoken officer was disgusted at the pillaging that went on, and let out in his own fearless style; and the hard word rankled in the men's minds,—the shot took effect; but confident in their fighting qualities, these reckless fellows bided their time for making the General retract. The time came, when, after a brilliant charge, the regiment, as they marched past, shouted out, "Are we blackguards now?" To which Picton, smiling, was obliged to say, "No; to-day you have redeemed your character."
In those days, which, if we chose to chime in with certain notions, we should call "the good old days," the Duke's judgment was sound as ever. But it is a question whether it has not maintained its influence long enough; and would that we could say, the recruiting sergeant in our times was not always lurking round corners, ever taking his pot-shots in those preserves of rascality, the dram-shops and skittle-alleys of our great cities! The necessity for encouraging the breed of such a ruffian race—of resorting to such a corpus vile for the supply of our army—has, we trust, been exploded. A work of melioration was forced upon us by the terrific climax of heroism and blundering in the Crimean war. The Augean barrack-rooms, cells, and guard-houses have been attacked; the physical condition of our fighting men has at last been seen to be a matter really worth thinking about, even in time of peace; and the conjecture has dawned upon our military administrators, that possibly soldiers have ideas above being either food for powder or serving as fighting marionnettes. Much has been done, more may be contemplated within the penetralia of Whitehall; in the mean while a lesson of national improvement, and an important one, as we think, is to be read in the ranks of the Volunteers.
Large standing armies have never been exactly agreeable to a people like us, who practise the arts of peace on rather an extensive scale. We are proud enough of our soldiers, when they do any thing glorious; we welcome them home with tears of joyful gratitude; we decorate them by the royal hand of our Queen; pension them,—do all we can with money to supply the loss of health or limb; subscribe for their widows and orphans in princely style; and employ our sculptors to raise monuments to their valour. We insist that our island home must be inviolable; that our colonies are to be protected; and, occasionally, that the cause of freedom should be countenanced when in difficulties abroad: but if we ask any one of the "gentlemen who live at home at ease" what he thinks about war and soldiering, the chances are that, while a serious cloud passes over his countenance, his hand involuntarily moves towards his pocket. Here we come upon a reserve force in the citadel heart of the wealthy civilian. Of course he knows well where his interest lies, and is rather disposed to boast that he has a stake in the country; and this leads him to look a little shyly at his military friend, whose sole business is fighting. Peace and Industry make a very pretty tableau, and so do War and Glory; but it is not easy to compose an allegory of the discordant elements, without running the risk of being offensive or ridiculously insipid to those of the community who love and emulate the chivalry of heroes, and those who think every thing a folly but the golden glories of commerce. But how does the picture look under the new light shed by the Volunteer movement? Does it not promise to throw a warm harmony over the subject? We imagine the comfortable classes may find very deep sources of congratulation in our new institution of social defence. They may be assured that certainly no increase of the army can be entertained; and possibly, with the expansion and perfection of the volunteer force, some considerable reduction may eventually be effected, and even that terrible invader the income-tax collector may be kept off the premises. The movement, which is now advancing so favourably, cannot be estimated by that which, to use the expression, broke out in 1800, although the old "Bony" of those days called up the same instinctive energy of self-defence. Events abroad have stirred up a fresh sympathy in us for all efforts to improve and to overthrow all powers used against the natural expansive tendencies and aspirations of humanity, whether the peoples may be suffering under the actual evils of foreign armies in their native land or not. This alone favours a military feeling. Then we have still alive amongst us the memories of the Crimean war, the Indian campaign, and the Lucknow heroism. These have infected us anew with admiration for the noble deeds and the perilous adventure of the soldier's life——grafted a new flower of chivalry upon the old stock.
All this has had something to do with inspiring our volunteers. But in a different direction the old leaven of the English sportsman has been stirred by the rifle. Already this new weapon has created an extraordinary feeling of rivalry and ambition to excel in the use of it. In proportion to its efficiency and perfection does it attract to the ranks, and encourage men to become amateur soldiers, with an interest that never was felt by our first gallant volunteers of fifty years ago; and, as far as we can see, this is not likely to burn out in another fifty years, nor, we hope, many generations to come.
But to return to the soldier. There is no love lost between him and the civilian, and unfortunately the policy of our successive military administrators has been one inclined to foster this antagonism and estrangement between the two classes. The first acquaintance that a regiment makes with a town in which it is to be stationed for a year or so, is effectually prevented from being cordial, by authority. The commanding-officer is ordered to have the credit of his regiment publicly cried down, and no debt under thirty pounds is ever recoverable by law against a soldier, neither is he liable to maintain his family or bastard children, nor obliged by any contract except apprenticeship. He cannot marry save by the rare permission of his commanding officer, who regulates his favours by the number of washerwomen required by the regiment. Of this regulation M. Esquiros, writing in the Deux Mondes, makes great fun. He tells of a pretty girl courted by a soldier, who said to M. Esquiros in confidence, "I love Robinson very well, and the army; but I can't bear standing all day over the wash-tub."
It is not to be wondered at that such a convenient avenue for escape from the contingencies of civil life specially provided by the State, should be constantly surrounded by all the demireps and vagabonds of the land. The Government sow tares, and expect to reap wheat. They bait their hook with a bounty, which, however, turns out to be little better than a delusion, and then affect the utmost astonishment that fifty per cent of these loose fish slip through their fingers before the year's out, and either come to the surface again disguised with long hair and a smock-frock as real Johnny Raws, still hungry for the bounty, besides having cost no end of trouble and expense to the country as deserters. No less than from 20,000 to 30,000 of these respectable characters are on the wing every year, and those who get caught are serving out their time lifting heavy shot about in the dismal and profitless confinement of the military prisons.
When the success of the volunteer movement became an accepted and a very significant fact, the principle, at one time viewed rather coyly by the War Office, became lauded as that upon which the whole British army was based. We were told that the army were all volunteers; so they are, but the term thus applied sounds wonderfully like a sarcasm. How are these volunteers, for whom we pay something like twelve millions a year, met with? Do they offer themselves in crowds, eager for the shilling a day, fine clothes, comfortable lodging, plenty of good food, and a life of military display, relieved by the pleasures of foreign travel? Nothing of the kind; the War authorities have their grappling-irons spread throughout the length and breadth of the land. Scarcely a hamlet but what is invaded every now and then, as soon as the crop of bumpkins is likely to have grown up again, by that smart, well-set-up, wide-awake-looking sergeant, who takes up his quarters at the Bull Inn when harvest is over, and plies his craft with considerable ease, and not without some extra emolument in the shape of head-money. The man selected for this service is chosen for his good looks, his military swagger, and his natural gift of persuasive eloquence. He paints a charming picture of a soldier's life, not too minute and photographic in the detail; flirts just enough with the village-girls to make the lads envy the advantage of a red coat; wins half his men by appealing to their vanity, and the other half by appealing to their stomach. The recruits picked off the land in this way are not many, but they are of the best raw material. They enter the service honestly, if they have been caught with chaff; and finding themselves certainly better off than on six shillings a week and unlimited butter-milk, these are rarely the deserters, but, on the contrary, they generally prove the best of soldiers. The squirearchy grudge having their lusty husbandmen drawn away from the soil; and what with emigration and flourishing manufacture, there may be some cause for anxiety; but our gentlemen farmers must learn to supply their place with steam-ploughs and reaping machines, and rejoice with us that men find something better to do, while Manchester union workhouse is half empty, and Quarter Sessions are fast becoming obsolete in Gloucestershire.
There has been a growing scarcity of the real thoroughbred country chaw-bacon recruit, so capitally described by Miss Martineau.[1]
This is our commanding-officer's "good recruit;" and as the doctor casts a keen eye over his fair Saxon limbs and sheep-like face, his gravity is a little tickled at the idea of inspecting such a man as that. But these rare birds seldom get into the meshes of the recruiting fowler now-a-days, The returns show a long list of "labourers," so called;[2] but the term is applied in far too generic a sense to every spalpeen that has carried the hod, or eked out his living from month to month as tramping beggar-man, harvester, or pilferer, and even to the gentlemen of no profession that hang about the bye-places of the great towns. It is these latter who form the great haul of the recruiting-sergeant, and no doubt society gets rid of a vast deal of scum in this way. But at the same time, especially when any stress for men comes, a vast quantity of worthless matériel gets into the ranks, what with the bounty, which rises as the standard falls, the temptation it offers to conceal bodily ailments, and the less rigid examination as to the fitness for service, which is obtained by ordering regimental surgeons not to reject recruits passed by a staff surgeon. During the Peninsular War the bounty rose to 24l., and the standard for the line fell to five feet three, young growing lads of sixteen being taken. During the last war the bounty was 7l., and the standard fell to five feet four, and five feet six in the foot-guards. At present the bounty stands at 3l.
The recruit discovers, to his disgust, after being sworn in for ten years' service, that the shilling a day pay, which the bland promises of the sergeant led him to expect, is so docked for his rations and his washing, that he finds himself entitled every day to a handsome balance of some three-halfpence; and if the poor fellow happens to fall ill and gets into hospital, where most likely he can eat nothing but water-gruel, his shilling is nevertheless so fingered by an official called the purveyor, that very little of it ever reaches his pocket. The man naturally feels it rather hard to lose his health, perhaps his life, in doing his duty, to be served with slops at the same price as good beef and mutton, and, as often happens, to be turned out of the service a permanent invalid, with perhaps nothing in the shape of a bonus, or possibly the magnificent award of fourpence a day for two months. Is it not an insult to boast that our soldiers volunteer to encounter all this? Would it not be a more honest and a wiser policy to abolish the practice of giving premiums to sergeants and others for recruits, and to insist upon these men placing certain printed forms, detailing the conditions upon which service would be accepted, in the hands of every man offering himself? Another most unworthy shift, as it seems to us, requires to be exposed, in the recent revival of a procedure which has something quite feudalistic about it,—that of giving commissions without either purchase or qualifying examination to young gentlemen bringing up so many recruits. No less than seventy-one gentlemen have received commissions in this way, ten of whom only have passed an examination (vide Report of Select Committee on Military Organisation). It would be curious to know what were the inducements these gentlemen held out; their representations of the soldier's lot, we imagine, must have been as highly coloured as the sergeant's, and perhaps even painted on a gold ground. A volunteer of this kind, bound under the hypocritical maxim of "no compulsion, only you must," cannot surely be considered better off than a conscript. There is no difficulty in tracing in this system of recruiting a vast source of the crime, more especially desertion, of which we hear such lamentation; and the matter is certainly not bettered by the régime practised by the non-commissioned officer immediately put over the men. An immense amount of petty tyranny goes on, which we can hardly think necessary for the maintenance of the principle of absolute obedience to orders. The officers overlook much for this reason, and any thing like full investigation of these petty charges is too much for their patience. They have their own affairs to think of; the study of the economy of the regiment, and the rational conduct of military discipline, are subjects too troublesome to enter upon; besides, there is always a shelter under cover of that military sophism, point de zèle. It is not considered "the thing" to be taking what might be thought an inquisitive interest in the affairs between the men and the non-commissioned officers. We now and then, however, are aroused by some awfully revolting instance of sudden revenge for very trifling causes, as in the ease of the man now awaiting judgment for shooting his sergeant at Aldershott.
The whole plan of punishment adopted in the army seems to be designed upon principles singularly uncongenial to humanity, and even manliness. Forgiveness is a virtue very rarely exercised; every fault and crime a man has ever committed is minutely recorded against him in black and white; and this most repugnant testimony lies side by side with the "Sermon on the Mount" on the table of the orderly-room, in daily use at the "Old Bailey" which goes on every day except Sunday. So that a man may be ever so smart and efficient, if he is liable, like some of his superiors, to say an angry word, or indulge an irresistible penchant for whisky, he will find his crimes accumulating against him as it were in a multiplying ratio,—a compound interest in the defaulter's book, which makes him give up his own character as utterly irredeemable.
Strange to say, even officers are frequently subjected to an extraordinary amount of unfair annoyance for matters construed as offences which in ordinary civil society we should only laugh over. We have heard of subalterns happening to express a difference of opinion with their colonel as to the nature of the wine, or even the colour of the bottles at table, being placed in arrest, and kept so till the tardy arrangements could be made for exoneration. In a similar spirit are those confidential reports which result in mysterious crosses against a man's name at the War-Office, and—no promotion. We could name a recent case of an officer, whose services are mentioned officially as preëminently gallant, who served through the Affghan campaign and volunteered for the Kaffir war, but who, early in his career, refused from conscientious scruples to concur with the majority in the sentence of a court-martial, and consequently died a captain at sixty, with twenty-five years' service. These are some illustrations of the minor defects allowed to exist from neglect, and which ought to be expunged; but they remain, because both men and officers are too proud to consider them for a moment in comparison with the honour that attaches to a service of such high prestige, in which all the regiments have their special traditions, and which most men will sacrifice the dearest tie on earth rather than disgrace.
Perhaps one of the most humiliating things a publicist, in these enlightened times, ever has to comment upon is "the lash." It is not that the punishment is too severe, but that it partakes too much of the cruelty of slow torture; and, inflicted, as it always is, in presence of the offender's comrades, it never fails to rouse a feeling of disgust and horror at the mere sight. But this is not the worst of it; for vile as the crime may have been, the men look on,—that is, those who can do so,—till the extremity of the poor wretch's sufferings calls up a certain sympathy for him; just as when some savage beast in his death-throes is put out of his misery by a death-blow from the most humane hand. The deliberate cruelty of the whole transaction has in it something quite unworthy of man and the dignity of justice. The misfortune too is, that experience convinces us no benefit ever results from flogging.
Public opinion, pretty freely expressed for many years against the lash, has only recently extorted the concession of a limit to fifty lashes, and a classification of the bad characters of the army into the comparative and superlative degrees—the bad and the worst. But surely if discipline cannot be enforced without this barbarous means, in the name of humanity, let Government relax their hold upon their volunteers, and not compel them to assist in a cruel ordeal, at which the stoutest heart has been known to flinch, and brave men, who never turned their backs to an enemy, have not had the courage to face.
The brand of the lash is fatal; sooner or later, it is certain to be followed by that indelible seal of the deserter's crest, the letter D,—an intaglio carved over the heart of the state volunteer. Here is another unworthy and really useless little cruelty. Why not cut off the man's nose, or slit his ears?—that would effectually prevent his offering himself as a candidate for reëlection. Would it not be but fair, that when the army volunteer offers his services, that book of fate "the Mutiny Act and Articles of War" should be laid open before him, and that he should be informed of all the contingencies that await the military novitiate? If fair dealing were in this way resorted to, we should hear no more of men chopping off their thumbs, rubbing pounded glass into their eyes, and otherwise mutilating themselves, in order to escape from a service into Which they have, in some sense certainly, been betrayed. We must find room for a remarkable case in point, which stands recorded in the archives of the service, and which we have from the very best authority. During the Crimean war, a recruit was brought before the assistant-surgeon of a regiment at home. He was a well-built able young man, with a hard-looking head, intelligent features, showing a trace of endurance and hardship, and he appeared anxious to serve. When on inspection he faced about, however, his back and side showed an awkward confused-looking sear, which the surgeon at once recognised as a burn of some kind. He accounted for this in the readiest manner and with perfect self-possession. He had been, he said, to sea one time in his life, and while in harbour was assisting to hoist a carboy of vitriol out of the hold, when the slings broke, and down came the large bottle, breaking against the deck, and spilling the burning liquid over our recruit. The surgeon, by the time this short explanation was ended, had convinced himself that the scar was really caused by vitriol, as he happened to be familiar with the appearance from an accidental burn of the kind on his own foot. Still, of course, he searched closely for marks of the lash and the letter D; none could be seen. The recruit was passed, soon learnt his drill, and became one of the smartest men in the regiment, well-conducted and steady withal. All went well with him for a considerable time, when in some mysterious way it oozed out that he was a branded deserter. The surgeon was directed to make a minute examination again, but nothing more would have been discovered, had not the poor fellow's heart failed him, and led him, thus hunted down, to confess all. "Sir," he said, " I know what you're looking for, and I'll tell you all about it." He then related how he had, for violent and repeated acts of insubordination and desertion, been flogged and branded. That when undergoing his sentence in the cells, he got a comrade to buy him some vitriol, and with this he actually burnt out the hated marks upon his body, suffering all the while the most acute agony, without its being discovered.[3] The man was, in the usual course, handed over to an escort, and very probably to be rebranded and flogged again before his comrades. Imagine the extraordinary nerve and endurance so terribly misdirected in this man; such qualities, one would have thought, might have led to deeds of Spartan heroism, had they been met with tact and some kindliness from superiors. Morally speaking, we can hardly see why this poor fellow should not have been allowed to follow out the plan of redemption, which who shall say he had not formed and resolved upon in his heart. But no; where a soldier has disgraced himself, there he is kept, with all the burden of iniquity on his head, and his disgrace blazoned to all his associates, if he have any, in the regiment. It says little for our management if the profession of a soldier cannot be made attractive,—if men cannot be got to enter the ranks without all manner of contemptible deceptions and false allurements. What to do with their deserters and bad characters is no doubt a difficulty with our military administrators. If we might suggest an expedient, it would be, to form a corps for foreign service, into which discontented or disgraced men could be drafted,—a sort of English Bashi-Bazouks. They might be called the "Retrievers," or the "Reformers," with the motto on their ensign, "Not so bad as we seem," or "Never too late to mend." There is not the least doubt these fellows would fight and follow their officers as bravely and truly as any, if selected with any thing like judgment; and officers would be found ready and willing to command them. During the Crimean war, a proposition was made to form a convict corps, and several officers of experience viewed the project favourably, more than one offering to take them in hand.
But if crimes and punishments are to be lessened in the army, the humanity status of the soldier must be raised, and the few good men who choose the life must not be contaminated by the dregs of society fished up by the recruiting sergeant. The present Minister for War has, we know, exercised a vigorous reforming hand in many directions; but we cannot think that he is so satisfied as to be disposed to rest from his labours. Soldiers are improved and improving physically and morally. The leather stock is no longer such a garotting implement as it was; trousers and tunics now give a man room for his strength; as to knapsack, shako, and boots, we fear the right thing has yet to be discovered; and we fancy a hint might be taken from the rifle volunteers upon these small but not unimportant points. As far as we know, the volunteer uniform proves cheap, comfortable, and serviceable; at any rate, if it is not, it can easily be made so, as they are not under the rule of Marshal Pipeclay.
It will be of small use looking for great results from the educational system applied to the army, as it is now, by a staff of schoolmasters, by regimental schools and garrison schools, by lectures and entertainments, so long as the army is recruited from the sluices of the enlistment system. Even with the aid of the chaplains, the whole force is swamped by the tide of vice and ignorance that constantly flows into the ranks. That better material exists in the country, and that a real military spirit animates the better class of the community, is shown by the strong ranks of the volunteers. But it is not likely that men with any prospects at all, men not friendless and houseless, will take to soldiering as a business, offering (provided sun-stroke, yellow fever, and the bullets of the enemy are escaped for twenty years) retirement with Chelsea and a laurel-leaf, or a shilling a day with a crossing to sweep.
There are thousands of young men in London and our other great cities doing work which women could do much better, while thousands of fair slaves of the needle are driven to a wretched, often a depraved life. Many of these youths lead a life of equal disgust and blighting tendency in the ranks of commerce; they may be fed like fighting cocks, or as omnibus-horses are to get the work out of them; but they are "put up," as a soldier says, in lots of forty or fifty in a room with a high dead wall close to the window. They sit or stand, or loll over the counter all day, and growing more sallow in colour as their salary rises, develop into leathery old men at thirty-five. Happily the Volunteer movement has already rescued some of those who could afford to join companies, but there must be twice as many who could not, however they might wish it. Can Government do nothing to make the ranks of the army preferable to these men?
There is no innate reason why bravery should belong to blackguardism; there ought to be nothing in the duties of a soldier debasing, brutish, or offensive to his natural manliness; it is the fault of our system that there is any thing of the kind. The volunteers will serve to enlighten the military authorities, and show them what a power there is as yet unworked. They may see here a body of men who can be trusted to wear belts and sidearms in the streets; and if they want to know how men of this class take the field for the first time, we can accommodate them with a specimen in those spirited fellows (Garibaldi's Englishmen) who charged in companies against the Neapolitan battalions, and stood fire like veterans, under the command too of amateur Brigadier Peard.
Of course we are not supposing that the majority of the volunteers would be disposed to enter the regular army, nor that any of the class who would be glad to become volunteers would offer to enlist, unless the existing system were very much remodelled. But the feeling evinced, the taste for soldiering, the aptitude in learning the use of the rifle, together with a volunteer force established as a permanent institution of the country,—an adult military school, in fact, with a sprinkling of cadets,—with all this before their eyes, Government ought, as a measure of improvement, to consider whether the system of pay and promotion could not be so altered as to make the service acceptable to a superior class of men. If Government were to lay themselves out to gain the services of genuine volunteers, we believe incalculable benefits would accrue to the State. The tremendous losses by crime and desertion would be comparatively annihilated ;bounties, always a questionable expedient, would be unnecessary; the average number of effectives would be very greatly increased; and, above all, a way would be opened towards reaching those desiderata—promotion from the ranks, with provision for earlier retirement from the higher grades of the service. The system of promotion from the ranks and no purchase have, we are aware, many difficulties, doubts, and differences of opinion surrounding them; but we cannot help thinking these are destined to be the rule some time in the future of the British army, and that the boasted idea of the French army, "that every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack," associated as it is there with conscription, may yet become the dominant one in our army, though without any tincture of military fanaticism. Here, again, the volunteers offer a practical illustration: we see noblemen privates standing shoulder to shoulder "practising the touch" with stout clerks and shopkeepers, and obeying the orders of Sergeant Perkins as if he were not their most obsequious bootmaker. The fusion of all distinctions except the mechanical ones necessary to the construction of a regiment, is not found to interfere with efficiency and strict discipline. As the ranks of the army are now filled, there is a raison d'être for the aristocratic element in the half-superstitious regard for rank which influences the lower strata and the contiguous layers of the middle classes; but the spread 'of social improvements, the cultivation of the waste places of society, must eventually stop the rank produce of weeds and thistles, and favour the springing up of new growths of sapling oak from the tough roots of the old tree. In this condition of the people, the State should be prepared to accept the services of volunteers of the right sort,—men who would despise bounties and abhor desertion, but not indifferent to military fame, with all the charms of a soldier's life; and assuredly not less animated by the sacred fire of patriotism which burns in the heart of every true Englishman.
We owe a debt of how many million blessings and benefits to our army—to those very men even whom a Frenchman (M. Esquiros) sneers at as the "pauvres diables qui ont accepté le shilling de sa Majesté." We try to pay it off in something better than medals and marble monuments, and crying in sanctified tones, "Peace to the souls of the heroes; their deeds were great in fight." But a clientéle of 64,000 pensioners is felt to be an awful burden on the state, with its 1,200,000l. per annum. Far be it from us to grudge this trumpery shilling a day, even if it does go to make some glorious old boys get groggy every night, and "fight their battles o'er again;" but the question may be entertained whether the succession to this class of the military establishment might not be stopped, by accepting the service of men for shorter periods at somewhat higher pay, and from a class to whom the shilling a day would be no great object. Pension for services would of course be excepted.
There are many persons, more particularly officers of great experience, who are perpetually harping upon the risk of a falling-off in recruits for the army. Looking back, there is some reason for their fears; but looking forward and around at our citizen soldiers, there is none. There is enough here to banish the thought of conscription, if ever such an idea could be entertained on this soil of liberty, and necessary as it is esteemed for the perfection of some of the military systems of Europe. Even the compulsory three years' service of Prussia would be esteemed by us an interference with the personal liberty of the subject. The old militia was a compulsory service by ballot; and many will remember the excitement about being drawn for the militia, a predicament only escaped from by either finding a substitute or paying 20l. smart money. But the hearty way in which the volunteer movement has progressed, not solely, as we believe, from any dread of invasion, suggests whether certain social privileges might not be the right of any man who chose to serve for a time. Not exactly a military franchise, but something more in the spirit of the Greek custom; so that a man, if able and strong in wind and limb, should not be considered to have won his spurs unless he had served in some way, either as volunteer rifleman, militiaman, or regular, not excepting, of course, the sister service. The salutary effects of bodily training, and the necessary acquirement of systematic habits of orderly and united coöperation, as well as the self-reliance which every rifleman must get, are all highly in favour of military training as a custom preparatory to many of the duties of life. This, however, is a subject that would carry us too far a-field, and as we hear the bugle sounding the "Cease firing," we must haste to leave our pen-skirmishing, and retire.
1. Fresh air, bread, bacon and potatoes, have made a stout man of him, though rather round in the shoulders and wabbling in his gait. He has generally carried a pound of good mud on each foot, and never had any nice fancies about the manure-heap three yards from the door. His ruddy face smiled through all the grime, and, as Bob's mother said, 'he do thrive in the dirt.'" (England and her Soldiers.)
2. The returns of recruits examined at the head-quarters of the recruiting districts give upon ten years:
Husbandmen, labourers, and servants . . 647·9 in a 1000.
Mechanics. . . . . . . . . .
294·7
"
Shopmen and clerks . . . . . . .
51·6
"
Professional men. . . . . .
3·2
"
Irishmen stand first in numbers, then Englishmen, and the smallest number are Scotch.
The recruits rejected for want of muscle, marks of medical treatment, weak legs, and deformed chest, &c. are 335 per 1000.
The army wears out at the rate of 32 per 1000 per annum.
3. M. De Balzac relates a similar artifice on the part of his ideal hero, the convict Vautrin, in order to obliterate the marks of the galley-slave's brand.