The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser. — London, England, 1805-02-22 00:00:00

011- h.ll h to r t- a en 0. in the same manner, why &mild ther not be trained sr. I constituted then alike ? I look on the military ch seder and fire in the., same manner as I do on the accarints of new discoveries in bks of voyages, w hich, fur Any thing I know, m oo or may uot be true. The Volunteers may fight well, and per haps they might not. That must depend upon many ciecu nst snc-s. It may he asserted, that a pis col is a b-tter weapon than a bludgeon ; but should it tarn out that the barrel is bad, the leek spoiled, the tint wanting, or the powder wet, why then the bludgeon becomes the better weapon of the two. I have heard people describe some of the Volunteer corps as in so high a state of discipline, that no distindion was observable between them and Re gular- Regiments. Why, Sir, certainly nothing more like a man than his pidure. We have heard et a painting of a bunch of grapes so very like what it r epresented, that even the birds wet e deceived, and came to peck at it ; but after all it was only a p tinting. We may say with 31acheth, that " man to a childish mind may seem a painted devil." It be said that eggs, plums, ,flour, and sugar, will an excellent pudding, and so they might, • I cannot be sure of that before I taste how the clients are made up; but all these incongruities defeas are so fully, so learnedly, and so philo sephically explained in a letter from a Gentleman in Edinburgh, which lately appeared in an able pe riodical work (Cobbett's Weekly Register), that I should recommend the perusal of it to all those Gentlemen who wish to make themselves masters of the sullied. The truth is, that I wish for a reform in the military system which should exclude the Volunteers ale,gether. I iht2ed I never • wished for them at all, though I know that some who have a right to be better judge* than I am, think they have been useful, in shewing the general spirit of the country, and that so far they certainly might have been, if such a manifestation was now necessary ; but even that does not, in my opinion. balance the bad effeets of anomalies in the Ministers. A force so e m .titced, would justify the representation of those who call us a nation of shop-keepers ; for however ' the Volunteers might love red clothes and military parade, the fad is, and will ever be, that they love their shops and their business much better. The Vo lunteers in arms give this country a fine theatrical attitude, but one that can never be permanent. It is indeed pettedly theatrical, but aesoon as the curtain falls. their arms fall along with it. You may pos t tehly, by some artificial means, make the present Volunteers something like a Militia, and get new ' ones to supply their place; hut, after all that you can do, their shops and their employments will naturally be always uppermost in their minds. We often hear, that though the Volunteers are no nierous, they never muster strong at drill ; and, the reasoagiven for it is, that those who do not attend fume no orration for ire as they had undergone that pruceu already ; so that it turns nut, upon the whole, that all the training a volunteer wishes for, is merely what will be sufficient to take him out of the auk ward squad. Under such discipline. are they no; liable to lose what they have learned ? I know there are soma things, such as the demonstration of a ma themat cal truth, or the art of swimming, which is seldom lost after having been once acquired; but, I cannot conceive how the same reasoto ing applies to the accuracy required for com plete military discipline The neat sahjeet I have to advert to, is the constitution of the Militia, which to be in as good e state of discipline as such troops casaba ; but still have a very bad effect on t he regular service. I know Daly of two ways in which greet armies can be raised, which are compulsion and regular service. In France, Russia. Austria, Denmark. Sweden. Prussia, and most other coun tries wherein considerable force is kept up, the men are usually raised by compulsion. Great Britain is the only exception to the rote, for here we are ac customed to depend for even regulars altogether upon voluntary service. The bounty given has sel dom been the inducement to men enlisting for life, it depended most upon the preference they might feel for the condition of a soldier. There may be other motives, but that must be the leading one . The bounty served for little more than drinking money, to prevent the making of a dry bargain, for the greater part of it was applied to providing ne cessaries for the new profession of the recruit. But the worst part of all is, the complicated difference in the terms of serving. fly taking the system par tially, you lose the benefit of any system. I `would not have the difference of limited and unlimited service. It does not contribute to even the defence of the country, as it may often happen that it would be most effeetually de fended abroad. Whenever England ceases to be great, it will soon cease to be a country at all, and thus circumstanced, it becomes legitimate for it to raise men in the same manner as other nations do. Tile system of ballot was the• most mischievous and desitudive that could have been 7:sarted to. I make no doubt but those who ,first proposed it, did it from the best and the a humane motives. Though the poison it con lay for a long time lurking in the blood, ithout making its appearance, it broke nut at last. .1 hat mode commenced in the year 1763; hut it v.- Is not till the American war, in 1773, that the eau of substitutes was first introduced into it. tare that time, Government was the only re , :liter in the market ; bat it had then to contend wish the Militia bounties. A person drawn in the inititia, nut knowing where best to apply, recruited for his substitute in his own neighbourhood. By this second recruiting in all parts of the country, the etre& upon the regular service soon became s h modest, that before the American war was over, the bounty rose from the usual standing price of a guinea and a csown to the enormous one of fifteen guineas a man. I have even heard of an officer 'rho. previoitsly to this innovation, was very near losing his commission ter setting so had a pre cadent as to give a bounty of two guineas to a man. What I now speak of happened within Site last thirty years: All this was exceedingly bad ; but as it that had not Demi enough, in the begin• aing of the last war We dissolved the whole fabric of our military system by suffering gentlemen to recruit for rank, and making them Colonels before they were capable of being Corporals. But what did most mischief of all, was. that when any em barrassment arose from these rptissures, we con stantly looked for a remedy in c.iling for more Militia. When that did not do, we formed a Scotch Militia, then a Supplementary Militia, afterwards an Irish Supplementary Militia, and after all the plan of a Provisional Cavalry. passer: over coun try like a blight, and in the manner of the hustling of pick-pockets. I have heard of snme venerable Lld country ladies, who, from the- dread of being turned,reto provisional horse women, gave bounties al.fifty,, sixty, and even seventy pounds, in order to provide substitutes. While all these schemes were rtetively prosecuted, the lii.gular Army was totally neglercted, and. the Irregular Army ran up to the amount of HOAX) men. If since that the Army of Reserve had produced any favourable et lea, the present Ministers had no right to take credit for what was established by their predecessors, whom they were so eager to displace, and may claim it, as•was done by Old Dennis, when he cried nut at the plas -house, " By heavens ! that is my thins der!" Whatever effed,however, might have been de rived from these inventions before, the present Minis- tershave broght that irregular system to such a stand that it can go no farther, and not a man be raised even by the ballot. They condemned the Army of Reserve, but now that the recruiting would not go on by their own expedients, perhaps they will soon find themselves in the situation of a sick man, whose stomach will not bear any thing that is put upon it, and vomit this precious elixir back again upon the country. The bubble of the new plan which was to supersede all others, and yield us immediate ly a great and disposable force, is now burst, and the House has stopped payment. When the plans of his predecessor had been cried down, and the present Minister appointed to replace him, his partisans triumphantly exclaimed, terse! All is now safe, the new projeft will set every thing to tights. Bring his grand e into play, and you are sure of every thing!' Bnt un fortunately, when the Right Honourable Gentleman was firmly seated, had arranged all his plans, had presented his musket, and placed himself, primed And loaded, in the attitude of shooting, alas ! the bullet dribbled out of the barrel, and all turned out to be no more titan a mere flash in the pan. One great etre& was produced : the Right Honourable Gentleman and his friends came in, brit the efielive plan did not come in with them. He aftri by his predecessors, like the man who laid a wager, and when he found he had lost, persuaded the holder of the stakes to let the money slip into his hand That the former rejettecl measure was had and feeble, we have the Right Honourable Gentleman's word for it, and for his own measure being, to the full, as de feffive and feeble as the former, we have now the word of almost every man in the kingdom. All the men - rirat have been produced, they tell us, have been obtained from the Army of Reserve, and that we can not expert sexy considerable numbers of men to enlist for general service, in the first instance. That is so far true, because tile Regulars cannot get any re cruits, but through this Army of Reserve, which is more advantageous to the recruit ; but it has this effed, that we get them in a much more circuitous manner than we should by regular reuniting. They say people are, got from the At my of Reserve, who would not at first, or beture they attained military abits, have ever thought of entering into the regu lars. It may possibly be so in some instances, but to counterbalance that, is it not probable that many persons, who might be disposed to enlist in the Re gulars, would first enter into the Army of Reserve for the greater bounty, and when they get into it may change their minds and stay there ? There is now no other way left of reeruitingior the 'Leg's. Lars. A man may as well express his surprise at so many Members coming into this House to night, and every one of them coe:ing from the lobby, The Army of Reserve is no more than the lobby of the Regular Service, because there is no other way of ! cuing into it. It is as neutral for a recruit to wish for a double bounty, as it would he for a traveller not to pass throtigh a gate where he mug pay a turnpike, in preference to another, where none wor ld be demanded of him. This Army of Reserve is a sort of digester to the service a kind f boiler or stomach of a piece of machinery, having capillary tubes running into every p:•iish in the kingdom. It is an intermediate path, which all must take to the Regulars. The inefficacy of the measures atiopted is attributed to the neglea, or u ant of exertion, in the parish officers ; but the Bill itself did not make it obligatory on them to provide the men; they we-e not tined, no penalty attached to their omission ; but, you may fine the parishes for the neglea or the faults of souther, who has no in terest in the performance of the duty imposed upon him. This was afting upon the model of " Boy, beat stick; stick, beat dog, &c." It is a vicarious punishment to whip the parishes for a negleet which they could not avoid, as, acceordiag to a trite saying. " Yoe may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink.' I never heard any person speak a word in favour of the measure of the present Minister. Throughout the whole nation, I can hear of nothing but one universal sentiment of condemnation of it. Therefore, though tie measure of :he displaced Mi nister WA: laid aside, and drawn by the new plan, we are far from being sure that the present humane s2riety are yet quite den. with it. They tell its, that the measure has not as yet had a fair trial, and, that though from circumstances it has failed, it was no fault ha its projedor, who may say, in the words of the Poet : 'T.• mortals to cl.otogri mecca, But to 1.t07r., ticmproniu., lii detetVe it. It is, however, but a had charader of this or any other measure, to say that it lay for six weeks torpid in the country, before any one could understand it sufficiently to at upon it. Now, however, that it has got into some sort of operation, I suppose we shall be told that it will go 'off like a spinning jenny, and make a noise through the kingdom, like the swarms of insects in Italy. whose approach is always announced by their loud clamour. Hither to it appeared, that the whole regular force raised by it in the count!., Las been no more than 665 men, and they are in the situation of Str Err:arts Wrong/grad in the play, who declared himself contented to get a little till something better should offer. In the mean time the country has arrived at that state that nothing better can well he hoped tor. We have got an additional staff at the expense of 519,0001. ; and all that has bee's produced by it is a levy of 630 men. By this fatal .measure. all our future means are, in all proisability, destroyed tor ever. Ministers here aled atter the manner of those savages, _who are ilfrowlsfklags doom for the purpose of ruing at the fruit. We are only trying to shift for the present moment, and leaving posterity to shift for itself, without her having any resources to proceed with. It seems as if the Government of the coun try had been transferred to the late Minister, only for the purpose of coiscluding the hopeful Treaty of Amiens ; and taken up again by his successor, just in time to let the military system drop as it were between the cup and the lip. It has already cut down all that he himself ascribed to the system of the ballot. He treats the helplesi pa rishes as some officers are said to have done those sailors whom they supposed to be dropsical, from repletion and laziness, that is, by lashing them up in the shrouds, and punishing them till the symptoms removed• So far trom encouraging the parish o+liters to deligence, the money he receives k mine' of what he is obliged to give to the crimp for a re cruit. As the plan itself has met with a complete failure, I caiipot lent think that is qpite as far as any experiment Olhald well he carried. The increase of the army these last six months, as appears from the returns, has been no more than 11,000 men, and its loss, stirring the same period, has amounted to 16,000 men. Instead, therefore, of gaining ‘27,000 men, as they promised us from this measure, they cannot tell in what manner to supply the increasing con sumption. No more than 5,000 men have been raised for the regular army exclusively ; and of these 500 have been obtained by the exertions of the additional and expensive staff. The increase of cavalry has been only 4003, and of the stated num ber of 53,000 infantry, these are no snore than 402,000 British ; the remainder is composed of the foreign corps, consisting of Brunwickers, and prin cipally of other Germans. I am aware that they arc represented as a force that might be considered as permanent, and may he sent to fight the battles of their employers in any distant quarter. But I greatly fear that they would be found no very ef feEtive substitutes for British troops in the defence of the country. Having thus proved, I believe, be yond contradietion, that the measures hitherto adopted have been, in ev respect, completely in effeetive, I mean to obviate the reproach so fre quently made against those who point out (Ideas, without themselves pointing out any remedy for them, and with that 'view, shall submit to the House what ate my ideas on this subjea. When I find the military force of the country expiring under this system of accumulated ballots, I shall propose to return again to the old and natural means which have 'been so long negleeted. I hold it to be a general rule, that when things are going on badly, it must be attributed to something of misconduct on the part of government, and, in endeavouring to provide a remedy, it .is right to distinguish betwe . what we can, and what we cannot do. Whatever may be the dispesity of resources and popula tion in different states, it is certainly in the power of any country to have a goad army in times of necessity, and yet leave mew enough applicable to all the purposes of trade and industry. In the prosecution of trade, where men are wasted, the usual method taken by the employer is to increase the inducement to theta by increasing their price of wages. The profession of a soldier as not a pleasant one, nor a very wholesome one, but neither are those of the persons who work the mines in dif ferent parts of the country. In the raising of an army, Government should he the only trader in the market, and, having no competitor whatever, has shoe an-de- camaly whatit chooses. The very first thing I should de, is to re. move at once every sort of opposition or obstru:- lion, by entirely doing away the baitets.— To talk of the sacredness of the Old Militia sees easy to do in very fiee words, but he begged the House to recollea how much that constitutional establishment bad of late.years been broken in. upon, in the most extraordinary and most oncererrionions manner that ever was heard of ; and for them to be now so tender of that which they had dealt so freely by, was much the same, in his mind, as when a dinner was wanted, to place the lamb under the hands of the butcher, and the inference was pretty equally deducible." Mr. Windham then again ad verted to the subjea of the Volunteer fore. by way of chewing that it could nor fail, if continued to be kept up, to be highly injurious and detrimental to the service of the regular army. It had, he said, been mentioned, that a difficulty had arisen in the minds ut some, that if our whole. armies were to be, as be wished to see them, composed of only one species of force, which he would denominate a re gular army, there would be scarcely any such thing as being Able to officer it properly ; bat thiswas to him a futile objeftien, and might easily be dame away by a proper and attentive regard to a due distribution of honours. The distinaion of an officer had ever been, and should always continue to be, considered as a distinction. of a surcina and dis tinguished value, to which every Officer would pay the highest deference, and endeavour to preserve it with the same ardent mind iced Hie:Able perseve rance, as he would his honour or his life. The mere possession of a red coat and a cockade did not constitute the character of an OtE:er in the regular service—he has something tar more digni fied and more distinguished attached to his name ; and if you take that from him by any means what• ever, yon waste your best m ist important means—dissipate " the cheap ii :nee of natiAns," and weaken yourselves more than it was possible for words to describe. *Chi; fair tree, he said, must have the full, fair, and free benefit of light and air, and not be smothered by this incumbrance which so fatally obscures and gloom' it. Nobody could say that much ought not to be done on this head,—without do ing which nothing of importance towards the service and security of the country was done, and which once well done, he was sure, would be the means of effeainei, every thing that could be wished : that done, various other services might be gra dually promoted and effected; and us o der to do this, in as speedy and efficacious a way as pos sible, it woLld be necessary to consider the condi tion of the private resources of those brave and honourable men thus called on at all timed, as the thrfen&rs of their country. It would be impossible that either the Officers or the army of the , ountry coati ever retain ii high estimation, while they were left to struggle with distresses and shifts ; be sides, what might not the House suppose would be tile general ill effeas of their remaining liable to it; and, at the same time, to the still greater disad vantage of beink surrounded by holiday soldiers, whose Officers, without having the same inconw. - niences, would be infinitely below them in the ad vantages of a general knowledge of service and irf discipline ? The next point of alteratinn in the ser vice to which the Right Hon. Gent. adverted, and which, he sad, he would not scruple to recommend. was a finmal, solid, and absolute renunciation -of drafts ; a system which, he contended, destroyed the natural, patriaric, and social connexion. that ought always to subsist between our several regiments. . and tends very greatly to weaken their force. He would, therefore, propose an immediate abolition of drafts, and at the same time to improve, by every • possible means, the condition of the subaltern of ficers, on whose care, vigilance, and condie.ft, the discipline of the great m tss of the army so mach depends. By these means you would look effeau ally to the situation of the general service. which has been much injured by this mi chievous and onwhole some prAftice. For when called on to go on foreign service. particularly to the West Indies, they set off as if they were going to " that bourne from whence no traveller returns " He condemned the mode in which they had hitherto, fur so long a time, been taken its a manner so totally unprepared to bear the mislanchnly and pernicious effc is which distant cli mates, and those of the West Indies in partk ajar, seldom fail to produce on tie constitutions of F...llio peens in geniertl. There were, he said, variOs modes :Ind methods by which these woefu l might be very greatly alleviated, if not entirely done a , cay. Th iy might `.: y degree be iltro dusei to them. They might. in tric first instance he sent to the Island of Mirror :J t ; there were rhea • the Bahama Islands, between which and Nova Scotia they might be so vasit •dy inured to the nature and heat of our Wc.: India settlements, us I greatly to lessen the dangers to which they had so 'long been exposed, by to.. premature and sudden an introduttion to them ; and thus, by a continued and severe attention in putting them on gradual and ro tational duties, remove those baneful effefts which have so long and so often drained the population of the country,* and. by so doing, add more to the strength and power of our forces in those climates, than by transmitting thousands upon thousands of TAW new raised recruits, who It sooner filled up the ranks, than they fell a prey in greater numbers to the ravages of disease. than to the bloody. and de strudive havoc of the sword. This called to .cis mind another very pressing reason for an immediate re form in the system of drafting, which was the in stant and never cemaig uneasiness and melancholy which usually seize on the minds of such soldi irs as are doomed to that denge-ous and iinwh •iewmait service in the West India Islands, ssh chi o • .ften brings on an actual fever, or if net so. predispii•es their habits to it, that if it comes on they elJ,omn escape falling victims to it. the next point on : which the Right Hon. Gentleman touched was that of punishments. He referred, on this need, to as author whom tie h rd lately ITAJ on T:11111 subject. with great pleasute, and from whom he ham .Is. nved use most importaat information. 'tills Ger dem:4n, be said, treated the slinks... with gnat per spicuity and depth of knowledge, 170.1(111=c:1 inizAly and plrlosophicsiliy. He compared tie- Army to a machine, which, however numer ,us a....i eat iaus its uses, yet, if it was well consuls:tell in all its pests, would go on to great perfecu tn.l a n wins ;d lit cikline. Mr. IVultiliam anti' see House, sts b t he had never for a moment supposed die army could be disciplined, or carried on without punishment, nertrartride wWd dritit'efilrein"Fo altea Any of the material or capital punishmen•s; but was V 4 ,4 cidedly csf oteniort with the author he AlreisAy Might he effected in time disiiasles alhided to, that" yery great and generni ► retorts' And in the nal pines and moral concerns of the alArre-4 " I " er moditicatioit of pitaishrnent. arid by ini e: posiMg certain mediums between the asfferent points or parts, which would each pray, a cheek up; a the other. and the tendency of Wiich wonld oe a gew ral amelioration ..t the whole. Neither was acre, he said, the smallest need to abolish any ,e 'ere pu nishment. for these mete not whir so materially af. tented the oak of the soldiers in an army He Iwould instance, he said, the penal code of . coon , try, which had dear' in every line of it, a , t yer the great mass of the people have no pane nr erred of it, because they say to themselve., we :aow its severities, but as we never intend to Offen t against or to incur any of its capital penalties, we live under no aperehensions. So with regard to use army, the great bulk of soldiers do not dread the capital pu nishment.: but it would certainly be a considerable alleviation to a soldier's mind to be always Able to say, if I go to parade with a button off ms coat. or happen to be ss minute or two too late, I shall nix be in dames of being tried by a court martial, or of suf fering anyimmediate punishment that is degrading to the feelings and spirit of a soldier: It was its these small intermediate points of Juty, thar acre of but little consequiewe in themselves comparatively .peaking, that he thought punishments might be modified and alleviated, with the greatest and hap piest effect. He then adverted to certain incentives, which ne thought might be applied with considera ble propriety and effect in stimulati . so: lieu T 1 keener and more active sense of their they. The [profession of a soldier was such as et xised him to the most imminent danger, and he who had any .Iwpm:tension of that. was not sit sl'r the fession, nor sh itildeeer tlinis of ....tering into it. It. ~:iowed, ' that. circumstance t CAS COU Its ynse;. ,t is im possible to increase 'he pay of the or a" , th at re spect, we had units tenntely arrived a •le n; 'Ass Shea But was there nothing else, be ask- I. senid be found worthy to be substituted assn alert to an additional 54. or 6J. a day ? was there no such , thing as contriving to put by part o. the bounty, to be paid on the expitation of the service, instead of the beginning, as a stimulus to the valuable ant tree soldier, and to operettas a reward to his family, in CAW any accideiit should happen to him. Tae bounty, he said, geninilly afted both ways, and he feared there was not above one man in eight, or at most, in seven, that really deserved it. Bat there were other things, which operated as incentives, as powerfully, or perhaps more so, than money. bap pose we should give him a right to vote in par . ticular places, or even s uppose we should go trill further and higher than the ele.tivc fran chise, a' d allow him to kill game, for instance. as a stimilus to be a tr ue ese soldinr. ant and thereby allowed to kill game t This would be no uoprece deserve preferment; dented method of holding forth inducement. e- suppo a serye shoe ! pendent of pay. In France the solutes was alwaT,. ,