The Press.
London, England, 1854-03-11 00:00:00

SOLDIERS' WIVES.

TnrtEz superior officers of the three regiments of
Foot Guards have protested in a letter to the Times
against the bestowal of public charity on the wives of
those soldiers who have mutinously married without
leave. The gallant colonels argue like military po
litical economists : they say, " There is a rule that
" only so many soldiers in eaeh regiment shall marry,
" the rule is well known, and if men violate it let
" them take the consequences." Well, the conse-
quences are that the public is willing to tax itself to
relieve those helpless women whose husbands have
obeyed a law of nature in contumelious disregard of
a law of the service. We are not impugning the wisdom
of the rule—it is indispensable—a married regiment
is an impossibility, for encumbered with women and
children it would cease to be military ; it would be a
family, not a regiment. But there are laws of nature
superior to all ordinances of man, and they assert the
source whence they spring : they prove that their
origin is deep in the heart of man, interwoven in the
principles of his nature, by bursting through the
shackles with which civil legislation and military rule
vainly attempt to fetter them. Amongst these is the
right to marry when you cannot keep a wife. Here
Nature asserts her predominance in a conspicuous
manner, for the stronger the reasons against mar-

219

riage the greater is the matrimonial alacrity displayed.
How the absence of a private soldier can affect his
wife pecuniarily is to us an enigma. But that the
military rule does not prevent these rash marriages
the number of destitute wives sufficiently proves;
therefore we think the three gallant officers are a
little exceeding the limits of their province when they
endeavour to check the free flow of public benevo-
lence on the ground that " it will encourage " the
breach of a military rule, seeing that the rule has been
already extensively broken, not only with out encourage-
ment, but in spite of prohibitions. Our soldiers
will not bear the standard of England the less gal-
lantly in the fight when they know that England
guards and cares for those that are dear to them.
As the old song says,
The merry heart goes a' the day, the sad tires in a mile a.'
Therefore we trust, and indeed have no doubt, that
an ample fund will be provided for the wives of our
gallant soldiers. The manner in which they can be
best assisted may be a subject for consideration, but
that the attention of Lord ST. LEONARD'S is directed
towards it is alone a sufficient guarantee that what •
ever is cont.ibuted will be applied in the most judi-
cious manner.

"WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR BLUE

BOOKS?"

UNDER the above title a short pamphlet has been is-
sued by Lord STANLEY, recommending such an ob-
viously useful application of parliamentary papers
that it is singular the suggestion should not have been
made before. It appears that the annual printing
expenses of the House of Commons have been, on
an average of five years, 28,0001. To this amount,
in conjunction with the printing expenses of the
House of Lords, there is but a small set-off—the an-
nual produce of the sale of papers, averaging between
3,0001. and 4,000/. Yet to this large outlay so little
would be added by the judicious distribution of extra
copies, while, on the other hand, so great an Raven-
' tage would thereby accrue to the public, that a com-
mittee of the House of Commons reported last year
in favour of a free distribution of these papers, under
certain conditions, to various free libraries and insti-
tutions. The value of this recommendation, which
is good as far as it goes, is diminished by the consi-
deration that the mass of information contained in
the fifty or sixty folios issued every session is prac-
tically of little service to the general reader in its
present bulky and undigested form. It may be
questioned, however, whether it is the province of
Parliament, arid certainly it has not at present the
machinery, to disseminate this information otherwise
than in a raw state. At a fractional increase on the
present expenditure (somewhere about a fifth or a
sixth of the whole amount) Lord STANLEY calculates
that these volumes might be supplied to all news-
papers circulating above a given number. Here, as
his Lordship suggests, are the Volunteers who will
take measures to give to the information thus conveyed
the utmost publicity in a readable shape. The utility
of these documents would be indefinitely extended,
and Parliament, as the titlepage of the pamphlet sug-
gests, would be thus partly performing the function
of a " national schoolmaster." We anticipate that
this proposal will be welcomed with alacrity by our
contemporaries, whose intere:•• in the matter is only
secondary to that of the reading public.