. objection to an efficient plan has constantly ricks, barns, and houses, at the approach of been, as well on the part of the "efficient a French army! Yes, we feel, and most as the "incapable" cabinet, the want of sensibly too, that these 700,000 men are not time, the press of circumstances. This was soldiers; and, this feeling operates as a just urged against Mr. Windham when he ex- punishment for our folly and indecision; pressed his apprehensions relative to the for paltering with ourselves; for our continudangerous and lasting competition of boun- ally seeking to put a trick upon the world; ties that would be created by the army of for our reluctance to do any thing that may reserve bill; and the same objection was, in look like taking up the gauntlet of the foe, and the last instance, urged by Mr. Pitt. They thereby commit us as to the issue of the conhave found time to drivel along, from year test. Our immense numbers are not only no to year, raising men enough for every thing advantage to us, but weigh against, in the but the real army; but, to provide for the eyes of our enemy, in the eyes of the world, wants of that service, to establish a force, and in reality; for, who does not know, respecting the efficiency of which neither that to render 700,000 men fit to perform ourselves nor our enemies could have en- real military duty, there must be about tertained a doubt, they have never been able 25.000 commissioned officers? Austria and to find time! We have frequently been France both together, with all their military dazzled with a grand display of numbers; schools, with all their fortified places, with and, even since the commencement of the all their campaigns, have not so great a num present Session of Parliament, we have ber. And, is there any one weak enough heard the boast repeated of 700,000 men in to believe, that we can possess them? Leaarms! These were not, indeed, called solving the 480,000 volunteers and their codiers. But why, if not for the purpose of amusing and deceiving us, is such boast ever made? If we do not regard them as soldiers, that is to say, men fit to compose part of an army for the purpose of fighting, of what avail is it to talk of their numbers? We may as well boast of the possession of an immense number of cats, or dogs, or of horses, as Sir Brook did. And, if we do regard them as soldiers, the fact of our having them is the most scandalous, the most disgraceful to our national character, that can possibly be conceived; for, what is our object in collecting such a number? "To defend our country," answers Sir Baalam. To defend our country against the menaced attacks of Napoleon, who never pretends to possess more than 500,000 soldiers, for the several purposes of attacking s; of keeping Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Switzerland, in a state of vassalage; of preserving the conquest of Hanover; and of holding the rest of the Continent at bay! The fact, then, of our having 700,000 men in arms for the defence of our country, while we have a navy far superior to that of all the powers in the world united, is a fact, at which, if it were true, a Briton ought to die with shame. But, it is not true. We feel, that the "men in arms," of which our ministers boast, are, with an exception comparatively small, not soldiers. They may be men in arms; but, in the force of those arms we place little confidence; for, would it not, with 700.000 soldiers in these islands, and with our fleets riding in the Channel, be an infamy too great to be supported to live under the existence of a law, which provides for the burning of our lonels out of the account, we have an army of reserve and a militia, both put together, of 100,000 men, which require between 3,000 and 4,000 commissioned officers. Can it be believed, that these officers are easily found in these islands, fit to command men in the day of battle? One of the great injuries that our service experiences is, the robbing of the regular army of its officers, by scattering them about in these inefficient levies; by making them inspectors, receivers, reviewers, and God knows what besides; estranging them from the army, from real military duty and military studies; mixing them with magistrates and parish-officers, with scarlet-clad lawyers, merchants, shopkeepers, and stock-jobbers; making them a sort of mongrel politicians and courtiers, and thus teaching them (what some of them are apt enough in learning) to seek promotion by crawling at the heels of a minister, or a minister's underling, rather than by marching at the head of their corps. How pleasant, should we feel, if, instead or all this bustle and hubbub through the country, about militia and army of reserve and additional force and volunteers; if, instead of all these ballotings and finings, these meetings of lieutenants and deputies and magistrates and constables and churchwardens; if, instead of all this, we had one good army, one war-office, and one system of recruiting? An army in these islands of 150,000 men, all subject to the same laws, the same economical regulations, the same principles of discipline; a compact, steady, obedient body of men, stout in frame and sound in heart, contented with, and even proud of, their professio.., and looking back with contempt rather than with envy to the walks of common life? How pleasant and how secure should we feel under the protection of such a force, wholly composed of our own countrymen, and never disgraced by the association with vagabonds and criminals! How, light too, should we feel the pecuniary maintenance of such an army! The money that has been paid for the mere collecting of our present heterogeneous mass of men in arms would have raised an army such as I am speaking of, and would have maintained it for years; to say nothing of the distress, the ruin of poor families, the heart-breaking separations, the constant and universal anxiety pressing upon the mind of every poor man, woman, and child, occasioned by the system we have so long and so perversely pursued. The expense of maintaining inspectors, reviewers, and of travelling, on the part of magistrates, parish officers and others, would have half maintained a sufficient regular army. The very law expenses alone would have supported a stout brigade. The charges for the printing of all these acts and explanations and schedules and returns and notices and citations and warrants and the lord knows what would have maintained two or three good battalions. And yet we are to go on! We are to persevere in this system of confusion, vexation, and oppression. Balloting is laid aside; but now we are to have fines. Something or other still to torment; still to alarm in some shape or degree; still to make men hate that which they ought to love, to fear that to which they ought to look for security. -When you develop the evils of this system, you are sometimes reminded of the dangers which political and civil liberty would experience from a standing army. These two words are now mere words, mere sound, retaining nothing at all of the sense and meaning of the same words, as made use of when the jealousy of a standing army was first entertained No, it is, as Sir Robert Wilson observes to Mr. Pitt, from the use of a metal very different from iron, that the liberties of England have been endangered; and though that metal itself has been almost completely banished, we have something that would, upon a pinch, most conveniently and efficiently supply its place. "Blest paper-credit, last and best supply! "That lends corruption lighter wings to fly. "A leaf, like Sibyls', scatter to and fro "Our fates and fortunes, as the wind shall blow!' No; it is not force of arms that we have to fear; it is the force of influence, noisele s influence; it is the force of the bank, the custom-house, the excise-office, that palace of taxation in the Strand; it is these and their standing army, which, including invalids and expectants, amount to not much short of 200,oco men; this is the army, whose invalids are not left to gd. a day, this is the army whose force our political and civil liberties have to dread. Before men again talk of the dangers, in this re spect to be apprehended from a regular army of soldiers, of the strength that I am speaking of, they will do well to point out some instance, in which English liberty has been endangered by such an army; they will do well to seek for some such instances of lawless force, as we have witnessed from the Volunteers at Chester, at Mount's Bay, and at Knaresborough. Nor are these all. A cautious silence is observed upon the subject; but, there are, or there were, daily such acts committed by armed volunteers, as would, if commifted by regular soldiers, bave excited a clamour that nothing could have quieted. Yes, this is precisely the system by which arms become dangerous to, and finally destroy, political and civil liberty. A system that confounds the func tions, the duties, and the feelings, of the citizen and the soldier, of the civil and military officer; that makes the magistrate captain, and the constable or parish officer, a serjeant, as far as fierceness and severity go, but not an inch further; while the captain and the serjeant learn just enough from their civil associates to render them lax and remis in the duties of their station. those, who prattle about that " constitutional "force" the militia, shew me the way in which a regular army could possibly produce in the country so much anxiety, so much real severity and oppression, so much real loss, not of political liberty, perhaps, but of what comes much rearer to every man's bosom, namely, his civil, yea his personal liberty? And, do those persons who are for maintaining our present heterogeneous mass of armed men, lest a large standing army should endanger our liberties, recollect, that the Parish army, for instance, is as much Can * For an account of the former, see Register, Vol. V. pp. 51 et seq. also p. 86, 87 and 68 of the same volume. Upon the trial of one volunteer, found guilty of being concerned in breaking open the jail at Chester, it appeared in evidence, that more than a hundred volunteers were in the riot.For the Mount's Bay affair, see the Advertisement of the Lords of the Admiralty, Vol. VI. p. 950. And, for an account of the conduct of the volunteers at Knaresborough, see the election-petition now before the House of Commons. under the command of the Crown as a regu lar army could be? Do they, when they are talking about da ngers to the constiration from a regular army, recollect how much influence and power is, by the irregular army laws, put into the hands of every man in office, whether civil or military; how much influence and power, heretofore utterly unknown to the people of this country? Do they recollect in how many ways, and in how great a degree, these laws keep every poor man in a state of subjection? and can they, then, insist, that such a system is congenial to the British constitution? As was before ob served, it is silent, secret influence, against which we have to guard our liberties. The patronage of even the army is a million times more dangerous than its arms; and, how much would this patronage be reduced by the establishment of an ethicient army? How would it reduce the number of olhces and of officers? How many inspectorship's and receivership's and reviewerslap's, what thousands of staff it would render unnecessary. A parish-man or militia-man consumes as much bread, wears out as much clothes, and occupies as much room as a real soldier. By reducing our numbers, then, to 150 000 men, what a curtailment would there be in the department of contracts and jobs! Might we not hope to see less upstarts, thus enriched, purchasing votes at an election; bribing the miserable people with the money that they have first robbed them of 2 In short, on whatever side we view the subject, we find reason upon reason for believing that a change of our military system is necessary to prevent the subversion of our liberties within, as well as to defend them from the assaults of a foreign enemy.But, it will be said, that, Mr. Pitt has abolished the ballot. For the prescut he has, and that part of his project has my hearty approbation; though, if he does not intend to revive it, it is very hard to account for the sending round of the schedules, relative to the militia, which schedules have, within these two months, been served upon every house-keeper in the country, and have had the effect of driving a considerable number of men back into the volunteer corps! And, it is difficult to conceive, that, while Lord Sidmouth and his friends make a principal part of the Cabinet, the balloting and other parts of that system will be laid aside. The CouRIER, a newspaper now devoted to Mr. Canning, does, indeed, contend, that Lord Sidmouth is nothing in the Cabinet. The passage is curious enough to be quoted. "For some time we have heard reports of Mr. Canning's intention to resign. "The coalition press has been particularly "directed against him for acting under Mr. "Pitt with Mr. Addington, as if the coali"tion had reason to suppose they would be "more successful in their attacks against "Mr. Canning on this ground, than against "others. But surely Mr. Canning cannot "be dissatisfied at the manner in which Mr. "Addington and his friends return to office? "They return vanquished, not triumphant. "How, then, can he be dissatisfied with the present cabinet? Little as be thinks of Mr. 66 Addington, surely he will allow him ta"lents sufficient to be president of the coun"cil? To pursue Mr. Addington further, "looks like personal malice; looks as if "Mr. Canning wished to persecute him "from private resentment, not to exclude "him on public grounds. Mr. Addington " and his friends came to the Pittites fallen, "vanquished opponents; they kiss the rod, "and accept of such things as Mr. Pitt in "his bounty shall be pleased to give. What “could be more triumphant or satisfactory "than this?" (COURIER January 31 ) The SUN, well known to be the leading Pitt newspaper, had the following passage on the 28th of January: "If some of our "observations be not quite palatable to the "friends of the late cabinet, the fault is not "with us; for a premeditated attack, if we "felt any disposition to make it, we should "not think that the persons alluded to were "of sufficient importance in the eyes of the "country to procure us readers for our ob"servations upon their conduct.”-- Notwithstanding this affected contempt, however, the public must be well convinced, not only that Mr. Addington" (the Pittites have never yet called him by his new title ') is not fallen; that he does not come a vanquished opponeut; that he does not kiss the rod; and, they may be assured, that he will maintain his opinions relative to our military force, which opinions will be found clearly expressed in his words, taken for a motto to this sheet, and, in which opinions, it must be confessed, he has hitherto, maintained a perfect consistency. Not so Mr. Pitt. To hear Mr. Canning, one would have imagined that Mr. Pitt had always disapproved of the ballot, and of locking up our men in the defensive system of militia and army of re serve. "My right honourable friend," said Mr. Canning, "when he came into office, "found, that the ballot had done as much as "it could: he found the regular army too "small, and the militia larger in extent than was fairly compatible with the means of the "country."* "Those who have witnessed Parliamentary Debates, Vol. II. p. 719. "the distress and misery, which the bal- we can bear. We know that we have "raised 100,000 men by ballot. To this "militia may, too, I should think, be added "another force for home service or we "shall not be in a state of security."‡ But, it was not only once or twice; it was upon every plausible occasion that he held the same sentiments, and generally conveyed in language, which, towards his opponents, would be thought very little short of contemptuous. At last, however, he "found, upon coming into office, that "the ballot had done as much as it could; "he found the regular army too small, "and the militia larger in extent than 66 was fairly compatible with the means of the "country" though, observe, the militia did "not yet amount to within 9.000 men of the number which he had asserted the country could bear without any material injury to the recruiting for general service; and, observe, too, that this assertion was made, after the army of reserve bill was introduced into parliament, and while it was experiencing his support! And, when did this modest and consistent gentleman discover that the ballot produced "distress and misery"? When did he discover, that it was exploded and oppressive"? He had uniformly maintained the contrary. When, then, did he make the discovery? Upon coming into office"? Why could he not * Parl. Debates Vol. II. p. 720. † Ibid. p. 743. Ibid. in Register, Vol. III. p. 1793. See also his speech of the 23d June, 1803 Register, Vol. III. p. 1835 et seq. Printed by Cox and Baylis, No. 75, Great Queen have discovered it before? The fact is, THE POLITICAL REPTILE. Or fiercely dart, it's foes among, (So weak and helpless it's condition,) Unless by Sovereign Rump's permission. Is of the OLD ONE a descendam; The Spirit of the PUBLIC JOURNALS, VOL. VII. No. 6.] LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1805. [PRICE 10D. "If I had here to state my objection," [to the present state of our force)" it would not be that the *militia is too much. I think, that a militia to this extent" [90,000 men for the United Kingdom) " can bear."- -Mr. PITT's Speech, 6th June, 1803. 193] TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM WINDHAM: UPON OUR MILITARY FORCE, PARTICULARLY THAT OF THE VOLUNTEERS. SIR,The distinguished and patriotic part, which you have taken in all the parliamentary discussions relating to our military force, has emboldened me to take the liberty to address to you, through the channel of the press, such observations as have occurred to me upon that important subject. The merits of the volunteer system * have given rise to such a copious discussion, that an apology may seem necessary for offering any further observations on that interesting subject. I do not mean, however, to exhibit any thing like a complete view of all the arguments which have been advanced by those who condemn, or approve of that system. This would lead me into too wide a field, and would, besides, involve the repetition of incidental topics of no general importance. What I mean chiefly to insist upon, is the impossibility of ever bringing the volunteers under the control of such strict discipline, as to induce the formation of military habits. If I can establish this radical objection to a force so constituted, it will be quite unnecessary to expose the extreme folly and indtility of all those extrinsic absurdities with which this branch of our national defence is encumbered. We are now as fully possessed of all the requisites for forming a correct opinion on this very important question, as ever we are likely to be. Superadded to the light of general principles, we have the authority of professional men, and the evidence of experience, by which we are enabled to rest our conclusions on a more solid ground, to deduce facts from principles, and by establishing the necessary It need scarcely be observed, that these observations are intended solely to apply to the volunteer system; and that they cannot, without the most perverse misunderstanding of their meaning, be construed into a reflectión against individuals, who certainly deserve commendation for their patriotic zeal. It is only to be lamented, that their laudable efforts should meet with so much discouragement from the incorrigible depravity of the system under which they act. 66 we [194 connexion, and matual dependency of scattered truths, to consolidate them into a system of connected speculation. During the weak administration of Mr. Addington, there might have been some ground for the falla. cious idea, that the want of discipline, which was confessed on all hands to be a very prevalent defect in volunteer corps, was occasioned by accidental causes; and, probably, arose from a want of activity in all the departments of the executive government; but, if under the direction of Mr. Pitt, whose talents have never been questioned, the volunteers have not been materially improved, but have relaxed in a very glaring manner in their attention to military duties; if that minister has not been able to infuse energy into the system, men of reflection will be apt to suspect, that the whole contrivance is radically vicious and absurd. In order to bring this important ques tion to the test of strict analysis, I propose, First, To establish a general theory of military obedience. Secondly, To consider whether the principles on which that theory rests can ever be incorporated into the volunteer system, so as to afford any rational expectation of its answering the end for which it was designed. Thirdly, Whether the vo lunteer establishment is indirectly instrumental in increasing the regular army, by promoting a military spirit among the people. The attainment of excellence in any of, those various professions or occupations, by which the aspect of society is diversified, de pends either on mechanical dexterity, or on the cultivation and perfection of certain qualities, either moral or intellectual. The bearings and relations of different occupa tions to the mind are, however, very differ ent, some depending principally on mechanical dexterity, others on the formation of peculiar mental habits and qualities. As the influence of those qualities is less plain and palpable to the senses, than the operations of manual expertness, their importance is apt to be overlooked by superficial observers. They are, notwithstanding, indispensably necessary. It would, for instance, be impos sible to practise either the profession of a physician or a surgeon, unless several of the strongest feelings of the human heart were |