lion, it might not, in the state of the wealth of this nation, be considered as any thing; it might not be felt; but if we divided it into so many shares, and made it into sums of 201. each, we should make it operate severely on the objects; we should crush many individuals; we should draw blood at every stroke. All our late schemes for men had been defective. We never should have recourse to such means if it were possible to avoid them, and he trusted it was so. That we raised many at present by choice was perfectly true. But the first foundation to be laid for raising an army without having recourse to compulsion, was to be found only in placing the army of the country upon such a footing as that a great part of the population might think it worth while to become soldiers, But if we did not make it so, we must go to the other mode, namely, force; but this was a state not likely to occur without the act of the government itself. There always must be, in attempting to raise an army on the principles he had stated, some increase of advantage and credit held out to the population who were to fill up the ranks. Now the means by which we were driven to the ruinous expédients that had so long prevailed, arose from our leaving the military life destitute of proper advantages and recommendations. We had been driving a false trade. We had been taking goods to the market not worth the money wo asked. Thence sprung cajoling and fraud, and artifice and deception of every kind. The thing offered had not been worth the acceptance of the man whom we wished to engage with us. When we wondered at the state of things, our wonder should have been only that of men whose goods were not sold because they were not valuable. We complain that we get into the army the careless and the distressed, and thoughtless and criminal, and we have used allthat is called the arts of recruiting, that is to say, of inveigling. We had lately increased much in the practice of enlisting boys. Was it that they were more numerous now in comparison with the number of men than they used to be? No such thing; but, in fact, the expedients we have had recourse to, had been obvious in the eyes of the meanest, and had consequently failed in spite of all our unnatural means of keeping them up. Therefore we were compelled to go to imbecility and youth. So long as the bait of immediate adyantage answered its object, so long

the

the army gained recruits; but that class to whom this bait applied, were not numerous enough to last very long. What should we have done? Why, made the military life more desirable! But we seemed to have but two ways, bounty and ballot. Hence our various schemes of military force, our supplementary militia, and our bounty, carried by the intervention of various other measures to its unnatural and ruinous pitch. There was a time, and that no very great while ago, when no bounty, or what did not deserve the name of a bounty, was given. A guinea was then the sole bounty. There were letters in the war-office, written in the beginning only of the American war, in which oflicers were reproved for having given the sum of two guineas to recruits. At that period to which he alluded, the service stood upon its own natural foundation. Then the bounty was the service-a military oflice was fairly offered to all those who liked to take a military life. The military life was a species of trade: in most other trades it was customary frequently to pay a premium for an apprenticeship to learn the art and mystery; but here we give a man a premium to take our bargain of our handsa pretty good evidence that our system is wrong. Though these things seem to have crept into our habits, yet never will the army be in its natural state till we can revert to its situation forty years ago. These principles, he thought, were so plain that they might be safely trusted. In other avo cations and situations of life, men could always be got by. adopting proper means: if we wanted people to work at anwholesome trades, they were always to be procured by a little advantage of wages. But we appeared blind to consequences, and resolved to go on in this fraudulent trade of seducing men into a bargain by a view of instant gain, which, without that bribe, it would not be worth their while to accept. Why not take the usual mode of traders in vending their goods, by the fair operation of a fair bargain offered to the population of the country? Let the bargain be proposed in the most eligible manner by all means. A man cannot expect many customers that does not make himself known, that opens his shop in a back street, and shews none of the articles he professes to deal in. He must have his puffs, and his clickers and barkers, and all the rest of the machinery for attracting public notice.. So here recruiting should have fair play. It should not

be

be all at one place. A man would not walk to the Isle of Wight to make a bargain from Yorkshire and Cumberland. Let it go round to the wakes and the fairs, and other country meetings. Let it travel about as well as the additional force bill, and not stand idle and doing nothing. When the trade was fair, there could be no reasonable objection to a good advertisement; but it was when the trade is an unfair one, that he condemned the arts of attraction and seduction. Now, with respect to the means of making the military profession more estimable, he supposed one of the first questions started, to be that of the. raising of the pay. Certainly if they gave a soldier five shillings a day, it would very soon increase the ranks of the army; but then, besides many other solid objections to this mode, there was a very material one respecting the discipline of the army. Too much pay would soon promote licentiousness, and that would occasion a necessary increased severity of discipline. That again would diminish the attraction. Means certainly were not wanting to increase the recommendations of a soldier's life. There was something of dignity attending the profession of arms, that had universally impressed itself on the minds of the people, and consequently animated them with the desire of a mili tary life. They could be paid in this way of life, by distinctions, cheaper than in any other way; but here he was sorry to say that we had most violently and lavishly invaded these distinctions in recent times. There could be no rational doubt that an army might be rendered much more attractive to the mass of our population than it is at present. Government had in its hands means possessed by no private traders, of conferring honours suited to the differ ent ranks and conditions of the objects of honours. But there was one great head of our military service that would admit of an alteration, by which the advantages and recommendations of the army would be prodigiously increased, and with very slight inconvenience to any branch of the army, or to the general conduct of the service. Supported in his opinion by all the reflections he had been able to make on the subject, by the opinions too of many high authorities, he must consider it as highly be neficial to make a change, which would bring the constitution of our army, in one material point, to a resemblance, to the armies of the continent, by altering the nature of

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the service to a limited term. When he mentioned all the other European armies, he might add, no small proportion of our own. The hundred thousand men he had before alluded to, all served on such terms with respect to time. If he thought there was a difference in the character of those troops from that of the regular army, it was not owing to this circumstance, but to their limitation in respect of place, and not of time, and also to the description of their officers, to whom he meant nothing disparaging, and to the different nature of their discipline. Their officers, as he had already said, never could have acted with their men in services of real experience. The change he proposed for limitation of time seemed to him to be supported upon principles so sure and incontrovertible, that he could scarcely make up his mind to argue it. Was not an option preferable to no option at all? Nothing could overrule the argument. When he heard that corps of this description had got men at the same price with corps on the other plan, he could only say, in answer, that corps of exactly the same description paid sometimes very different prices for recruits. He would not say that some men liked five guineas as well as ten; but these things happened by chance, or carelessness, or vexation, or through a desire of a soldier's life. No particular reason can always be assigned for these things, though they are contrary to the general experience. He might see some bodies rise in the air, though he did not know that the principle of gravity should prevent that. So he might say of those cases where men had chosen to enlist without option, in preference to the other mode. His object was to get that which the country had not, an army commensurate to the popula tion of this country. He saw nothing in the character of an army that opposed the measures he recommended. He admitted, generally, the differences of national character. One might see something of it here among the English, Scotch, and Irish. But all must be at a stand if we could admit any supposition so perfectly gratuitous as that which would find out a distinction of the kind alluded to between our army and those of all the continent. Upon what theory should this idea be entertained? Why should the discipline be affected? Take all the corps raised here for limited service, and the hundred thousand troops already mentioned, Are not all those very well disciplined? Then there were the whole Indian armies. He was always fearful of making

any

any unnecessary changes, he had that principle strong upon his mind; but still he could never entertain any ap prehension upon the subject on which he was now speaking. On the contrary, he might rather say it opened the door to improved discipline, by rewards, and by lessening the frequency of corporeal punishments, which, however, he knew could not be entirely abolished. Where there were fierce spirits in great numbers, discipline must be maintained rigidly; but he thought various means might be applied to diminish the evil, and above all, by getting a better description of men into the service. His conviction was, that it would improve the discipline. Then came the subject of desertion. But if the noble lord opposite (Lord Castlereagh) would examine into the state of a recent act, he would find not fewer than one-fifth of the number raised had deserted. He should not just then enter further upon that point. This was one of the consequences of pursuing that vicious system of buying by high bounties. The objection to a limited time of service, which seemed to him to have most weight, was that respecting foreign and colonial service, and this was particularly important in considering a British army. But it must be admitted that this objection was a distant one, and gave time enough for the adoption of various modes of obviating any of the ill effects supposed. A variety of measures concerning colonial defence and additional advantages might, he should think, be determined upon without great difficulty, which would narrow the objection so much as to reduce it to a state that could be no longer formidable. If the objections were strong, they would be strongest in the case of the East India force, and yet the whole of that army was recruited for a limited time. He had heard it said that the company did not keep their faith: but upon enquiry he learned that they did keep their faith exactly; and, indeed, had they not, how could their recruiting have gone on? He understood they were scrupulous and exact to such a degree as to provide comfortable residences for the men who wished to return, and sent them home in the company's ships. Now that was a strong argument to shew that we could carry on distant service by troops so raised.

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In the variety of opinions he had heard upon this subject, in the variety of treatises he had read upon it (and some of them were written with good judgment), he found

VOL. I. 1805-6.

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