The Sun.
London, England, 1804-06-06 00:00:00

we had not the same facility in•adopting compulsory
measures as they had ; ‘ve could not go by the same
short cut to our objeCt as they could to theirs.
The King of Prussia may say to his Sohjeas, •if he
wants ao Army, that he will take the men, without
stating any purpose for which he wants them, and
the Army must be filled up instantly.; but when we
come to operate, we have no such short cur, for we
must operate through the medium of-Laws, and by
the deliberations of Senates. Their compulsion was
short ; ours, from the nature of things, was cite.
coirons—their compuhion might be made to aim at
one objet only ; ours must he attended, even in its
rigour, with certain modifications—they had. no-
thing of this kind to obstruct them, and therefore
their Measures, however compulsory, were prompt ;
whereas ours could not be so,—and this was a reason
why Parliament sh6uld be slow in having recourse
to any measure which was either compulsory in
itself, or might become so, and the more so, when
there was no immediate and absolute necessity
for it ; more particularly when the system was to
be a mixture of the voluntary and the compulsive ;
and in 'this mixture care should be taken that the
voluntary did not interfere with the compulsory
part of the measure. We gained, by the compul-
sory measure, nothing but- that
_part of the Force
we could not have from the Volunteer Service;
there was no ballot in thii Plan, nor did it do
all ballot away, nor did it create any ballot.
The 1-i ruse must recoiled that by this Plan we
should '• be giving up a great number of inert, whom
we might have by other means, and that we should
g tin only those whom we should have had by-other
means, and some of whom we should have had by
Recruiting for the general. Ser vice ; • but his Right
Hon turabie Friend had observed, that having ob-
tained men for a limited service, they-would ac.
quite Military habits, and a military spirit, which
would induce them to enter afterwards into the
ge:.eral service. He thought there was a fallacy in
this supposition ; they might be more disposed than
if they had never been in service, btu it did not fol-
low that they would be the more disposed to be Sol-
diers in the general service, nay, some might be the
less disposed, on account of having been Sol-
diers already ; they might sow all their Wild Oats,
and might be of opinion that a hOme was better
than a foreign station. They would not enter
into an ArMy to go abroad, because there was a
home Army to receive them, 'so that this was drying
up the fountain of general service by the means pro-
posed to increase it. The general objeCtion, there-
fore-, to this Plan was, that it divided our Military
Force into two parts, which militated against each
other. • "I:he Plan proposed might he described as a
recruiting system for the Army by Parish Officers.
He rather inclined to think there were some parts of
it that might be deemed an improvement, but to
the whole of it he could not assent. That it was an
Improvement on some part of our modern Military
System, was indeed no great praise to any Pldn, for
' that system had actually rendered recruiting impas-
sible. He therefore approved of the measure which
went to diminish the,Bouoties; but it should be re-
membered, that in all cases under this'measure, the
Parish Officers -would go to the full extent of the
B''untY's tot they had no inducement to economy,
and might to
_many instances have an induce.
merit directly the other way;and would be excused
by the Parish, since it was to be fined in the
event 'if not furnishing the men; therefore there
Was no hope they would offer less than the limited
bounty, nor was it perhaps practicable to prevent
them from giving, in some cases, more ; it was not
a good set-off, to recruit the Army by Parish
Officers, for their civil occupations and habits would
not easily. bend to .military purposes. He ridiculed
the idea, long entertained-, of the policy of the•bal-
lotting system, which he thought in its nature de-
fective, although in the present state of things he
would not propose to do it away. He said that
when a sonple ploughman or rustic was ballotteti
for a military man, it •t ruck h.m like an apeopleetic
fir, and it was a common thing to see such a per-
son running up and down to inquire where a re.
cruit could be had, sometimes in one place and some-
times in another ; he looked about him for a substi-
tute, like David Simple for a true friend, and could
never find him until he met a Crimp; from this
source, therefore, no advantage to the service was
to be expected. But there was a considerable
ohjeCtion to. this System of Parochial Recruiting.
He was afraid that a great deal of tyranny might
ire exercised under it; a man who had made him.
self obnoxious to the Overseer, or perhaps to the
'Squire, might be exposed to a deal of hardship
in consequence of this System, out of which great
vexation might arise, and these were evils which,
he was confident, had not presented themselves
to the intelligent and vigorous mind of his Right
Honourable Friend, or he would never have made
this proposition. As to the probability, that
when we had got the men for a limited service,
they, might afterwards go into the general service,
there was really nothing in it; for men never did, in
any considerable numbers, enter into the general
service for the reasons assigned by his Right Hon.
Friend. The motive which Soldiers had for chang-
ing from one, Regiment to another, were generally
whimsical. One man would say, he would not go
into such a Regiment, because it was going to a hot
climate, and he wished to go to a cold one: that
such a Regiment was going to Gibraltar, whereas
he wished to go to Canada—another would say,
that he would go into such a Regiment because
such a one was Serjeant in it, and he would make
him a Corporal, or he would go to such a Re.
giment, because it was quartered where Peggy
lived. Such were the motives which influenced
men of this description in the choice of Regiments;
so that there was but little hope to the general ser-
vice from this Reservoir of the Army of Reserve.
As far as it might produce men, he was willing to
allow it merit ; but he hoped but little from it ; on
the contrary, he was afraid the plan, in this respect,
would counteraa itself. By this measure a bounty
was to be fixed, beyond which it would be almost
sure to rise, when it was to be lamented that any
such thing as a large bounty ever took place, for it
did not contribute to increase the number of Recruits,
but-had a contrary effett. He was old enough to
remember when theßounitoyrwiat w
s not the
otelyinadgueuerneeant:
to Recruit to enter,
such was the state of things until the system ut high

bounties 'put" an end to it, anirtile•Ainfv was a 4 w4l
•,•uppil,!(l then at, •Fresent. ;hrtc apother
view id •this snljed) which he thought
)rtant, and that was the efFM of our, large' Vo-
luntary sy,tetri, and our Military. systeni which
,vas now aEted upon. To make a Country Mili-
tary, it was not necessary to make every man it

a Soldier. On the contrary, to make every man a
soldier was the way to have none. The greatest
Military Countries were not those where the men

were all sohlieis ; the Countries which were must

military, were those who had no Militia, and those
that had Militia were the least military ; for this
immense mass of Volunteer or ballotted Military
tended rather to deaden than to enliven all military
habits. The military spirit of a nation was kept up
more by those who were not military, than by those
who were ; for the spirit of military life was not so

much to please the alor as the audience. It was
.the applause of the audience that constituted a great
portion of the reward, and enlivened the spirit of
a military life ; and this was emphatically the case,
as far as it regarded one halt of the human race, and
that the most important class in it, as far as the in.
fluence of applause operated on military ardour—a
class that did not join in military toil, but whose
approbation of the achievements was the greatest
inducement to undertake military enterprize—he
meant the women. It was their approbation that
excited men to run the risks and endure the toils
-.of military life ; this approbation must be dimi-
nished in proportion as a military occupation was
common, and it was common in prnportion as it had
.a mass of Volunteer and Ballofted Forces. He
was, therefore, so far from considering these Vo.
lunteer and Ballotted Force from making a military
people, that the system was a dead weight in the
scale against that objed ; and he was afraid that
the evil of this system was general, and would
operate as the air does, continually. We had
got into a system by which we had surrounded
and almost concealed the whole of our Regular
Force. As to plans of Military Force, his plan
would be to have none at all except ooe, and that
was to change the condition of the service from a
service for life to that of a term of years.—Why,
then, should Parliament be working its brains up
with the considerations of machinery which was not
wanted, and which was doubtful as to its opera-
tion in the best, and destrudive in many views ?
What had they to do in this matter ? Nothing
more than to remove all the ohstruling causes
to the Recruiting of the General Service. The way
to do that was to put an end to the competition
whim the Recruiting of the General Service had
to encounter. There was nothing in our Constitu-
tion which prevented the Recruiting for the General
Service. 'We had, until the modern system of large
Bounties and Ballots, the Regular Service easily
provided for. It was not from the state of our Popo_
lation that we now wanted men, for the Population
had increased ; it was not for the want of money,
for we had certainly more money now than ever ;,
besides this, he considered that the present noet,,,,_
tion of trade, from the spirit of adventure, was very
favourable to recruiting, if due advantage was taken
of the circumstances which ffiesented themselves ;
but men would not go -into a General Service for a
low Bounty, while they could go into a limited Ser-
vice with a large one ; and he rtionght, there might he
some facility, if due advantage was taken of it, in
raising men for the .Atmy, when, notwithstanding
all our•wealth, it appeared that we were; paying five
miliions a year to the Poor Rates ; an ;t he could not
help 'thinking. it odd that we shoul4 be laying out
several thousands a year upon a system to prevent
emigratitoi-from Scotland, on aceinnot of the difficul.
ties-of subsistence in scone pao ts there, and yet
should , have such difficul.y in procuring men for
the Army; besides this, we had given to the Peiiple a
love for the parade of out Voluntary and Balloting,
System, and high Bounty, that they would not re-
turn to the old and economical mode of raising a
Military Force by moderate Bounties ; . that the
bulk of men were ;tow like the lover in The Appren.
rice, who, wheat he is told that the door is open,
and he may run away with his love, declines that
easy course, because it sets aside the use of his ma-
chinery, and says, " If I go out of the door, what
Will become of my 'scape ladder ?" So with us, we
were making use of our escape ladders, when the
door was open and we might walk out. There' was
nothing to do in the way of Plan, but to avoid all,
except that of changing the duration of the service
to a term of years, instead of being for life, and
that of doing away the high Bounties and those
measures by which a competition was cleated. Fsr
these reasons, he could not help thinking, that a
great part of the Plan of his Right Hon. Friend was
so cbjeetionable, that he should be under the neces-
sity of opposing it.
Mr. JOHNSTON expressed his astonishment, that
after the House and the Country had been told, the
ignorance and incapacity of the late Ministers was
such, that the Country was in danger by their con-
tinuance in power, that the Right Honourable Gen-
tleman who had succeeded, and had been now a
considerable time in power, had proposed no better
measure than that of carrying into effed the measures
of his Predecessors, for so he conceived thie to be.
Mr. ADDINGTON said, he differed consider-
:Hy with the Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr. PITT),
but was not at the same time friendly to the opinions
expressed by the Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr.
WINDHAM). The strong objedion he felt origin-
ally to the Plan proposed by the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman (Mr. Pier) was, that it was of compulsory
cliarader ; and under the Free Constitution under
which we lived, we ought not to expect that which
• I only belonged to Despotic Governments ; they must
make up their minds not to exped to ingraft upon that
Constitution anomalies which were wholly foreign
to it. The present Plan, however, .was not in
every respect similar to that last proposed by the
Right Honourable Gentleman (Mr. PITT); but at
the same time, with tesped to the augmentation of
the Militia, he still remained of opinion that it was
a wise measure, and he was sorry to hear of any
proposal for a redudion of that description of farce-
Jr was also to be observed, that the Militia had-
, been chiefly kept up by means of Substitutes dt'awn
1 ' from Volunteer Corps. This Force was altogether
of so advantageous a natureo that he could not con.
sent to its redudion, unless something better was
1 propusedin,its. stead, An unexampled ioice had