ART. VII. THE MILITIA AND THE LINE.

1. Acts 15th and 16th Victoria, Chapter 50: 17th Victoria, Chapters, 13, 16, 107, and others being the Acts of Parliament, Regulating the present Militia Establishment of the United Kingdoms.

2. War Office Circulars of March, 1855. Being those Relating to The Militia.

Startling and terrible as have been the incidents of the Crimean Expedition, they have as yet but barely awakened the English public mind to the fact that we are in a state of war. The long, long peace-the many instances in which the gathering of storm clouds in the political atmosphere dissipated and passed away without explosion-the huge self-contentment which England's commercial prosperity, and the adulation it won for her, from foreign visitants and writers, had tended to foster and augment-all have contributed to lull her people into a false security, and to render it difficult for them fully to realize even now the fact, that their triumphs of peace are interrupted, and that hard blows, and stern and bloody, and widewasting contention in arms are displacing, and replacing, the pacific strivings and gainful and accumulating enterprizes of trade.

When this has been and is the case-as any one with the most ordinary opportunities of knowing the English mind. will at once admit it to be-there is no longer much room to wonder at the defects and blunders so notoriously and lamentably manifested in our inilitary arrangements. It was but natural that a state of things so entirely unexpected and undreamt of, should not have been prepared for; and that on the contrary, even the ordinary military establishment of the country should have become the object of cavil and attack, by reason of its apparent want of necessity and indisputable expense.

We shall not stop here to enquire and determine to what degree that kind of dilettante republicanism, so often noticeable in the sayings and doing of the potential middle classes of England has contributed to stimulate the attacks in question, and to render them, partially indeed, but still only too

extensively successful. As it would not altogether be very consistent with the reforming professions and reclamations of these classes, to seek to lay hold for their own use and benefit of the patronage afforded by military expenditure, the next best thing in their opinion, was to deprive the aristocracy of it; and to this object then every effort has been sedulously and constantly directed. The platitudes about the unconstitutionality of a standing army-the more plausible, and to a certain extent reasonable, diatribes against the system of promotion as existing; the furbishing up, and where thought required, the exaggerating of every case of alleged, or proved misconduct of military authorities-these and other such auxiliary means have been industriously and perseveringly employed; and the result of the whole has been, that restrictions and reductions have from time to time been carried in Parliament, which have undeniably and with deplorable effectiveness, operated to diminish the efficiency of our army, and thereby not very indirectly to occasion much of the heavy disasters we have had to lament.

There were many warnings of this. Experienced Officers, in and out of Parliament, frequently labored to impress upon the public mind the danger of so ill-advised an economy; and foretold, what has been unhappily proved in the most overwhelming manner by the events of the last twelve months, that the comparatively paltry savings and clippings of the thirty or forty years of peace would be found not only to have a most injurious and crippling effect on our first efforts in our next war, but would then necessitate a new and immediate expenditure, far outbalancing in money amount, to say nothing of other considerations, the aggregate of the long series of reductions.

The Duke of Wellington, on more than one occasion, urgently remonstrated in his place in the House of Lords, against the general impolicy of these progressive reductions, and forcibly pointed out the particular hardships they inflicted upon the army; in depriving it of adequate reliefs in the tour of colonial duty, and altogether so weakening it, that to use his own strong expression, England had altogether no more men in arms than barely sufficed to supply the sentries on post throughout her wide dominions.

All idea of a reserve force was long abandoned and forgotten. It really seemed as if the ruling powers of the British Empire

expected and believed that either the peace of Europe, or the lives and vigor of their existing number of soldiers would be perpetual. Even the occasional "little wars" in Indian or Caffre territory no further disturbed their quietism than to cause a few scanty additions to be made to the battalions actually employed at the scene of conflict; and where the casualties of service did not suffice ere the end of these "little wars," to nullify the additions so made, a positive reduction to the previous statu quo was sure to follow.

When such was the manner in which the regular army was treated, the most uninformed person in military affairs will readily have surmised that the old constitutional force of the country, the militia, were very early put out of question altogether such was the haste with which its services were sought to be dispensed with, that some regiments were disembodied and disbanded, almost before Napoleon Buonaparte had reached the scene of his first exile, the Island of Elba, in the year 1814. But no partial concession upon this point was of avail to stay the hasty hands of the economists or constitutionalists, as they assumed to be, of the day; and accordingly, the winter of 1814-1815 was marked by several efforts on their part to compel the then government to get rid of the militia at once. The celebrated Sir Samuel Romilly capped the climax of these efforts on the 28th of February, 1815, scarcely more than a month before it was announced to the same House of Commons that the dogs of war were let slip again, on the escape of Napoleon from Elba and his landing in France. Sir Samuel's motion was as follows:"That nine months having now elapsed since the definitive treaty of peace with France was signed; and this country having during the whole of that period been at peace not only with France, but with every power in Europe; and no cause whatever having existed or existing now, for apprehending invasion by a foreign enemy, or any insurrection or rebellion within the realm, it is contrary to the spirit and true intent. and meaning of the Act of 42 Geo. 3, c. 90, to continue any part of the militia force of this country still embodied."*

The arguments with which he supported his motion may be thus summarily stated. First, the absence of Foreign War, (that with the United States being considered on the eve of settlement) and similar absence of domestic disturbances or Hansard, Vol. 29, p. 1095. 1815.

insurrection. Secondly, the severe sacrifices which service in the ranks of the militia imposed upon the lower orders, in their separation from their homes and families,-their necessary total abandonment of all civil occupations and habits, their deprivation of civil rights and subjection to military law. Thirdly, that neither the Constitution, nor the Act of Edward the Third, which first gave organization to the militia, conferred upon the sovereign any power to call for the personal services of the subject, excepting in the cases of actual invasion of the realm, or of rebellion; and that the Act of 42nd of George the 3rd, chapter 90, (quoted in the terms of his motion) recognized the royal authority to that extent only, and expressly under the specified limitations. Finally, he appealed to all precedent to justify the proposition he had made.

The answer to him from the ministerial side of the House comprehended the following observations:

First, that the war with America was not entirely at an end; and that even if it were, the state of Europe was not yet so settled down as to warrant a diminution of the military force of Great Britain; especially considering that a portion of her regular army has, according to the arrangements between the allied powers, to remain for a time in France as an army of occupation. Secondly, that the Acts referred to, while providing specially for the levying of the militia force, were silent as to the manner and time of its disembodiment; and that a discretion on those points was therefore to be inferred as being left to the government of the day. Thirdly, that there were precedents, as in 1760 and 1761, when the milita were retained in arms although all danger of invasion had ceased; in 1805 when the situation of affairs that had required their being called out no longer existed, and in 1813 when the French army was totally ruined in the Russian campaign, and therefore the danger of invasion could no longer be said to exist.

The best comment upon this debate, is by simply calling attention to the fact before alluded to, that in less than six weeks after it the country was again plunged into the vortex of war. It is true the latter was brief; but only by reason of the promptitude with which England was enabled to bear her part by the dispatch of troops to Belgium. Had the militia been disbanded, it would have been utterly impossible

for her to have dispensed with the presence of her regular army-the battle of Waterloo would not have occurredthe Prussians would have been beaten in detail-the junction of the Russians and Austrians prevented, and the whole face and destinies of Europe would have been changed, and certainly to the disadvantage and heavy detriment of Great Britain.

No warning however, was taken from this narrow escape, as we have already remarked, and shall presently have to shew more in detail. Meantime it cannot be out of place here to give a brief summary of the history of the militia force of these countries, in illustration of the statements and arguments to which we have been alluding, and several of which are beginning to re-appear, in the reports and speeches, and in the leading article columns of newspapers, in our own day.

We are not about to waste time with a dissertation on the early military systems established in England by the Danes, Saxons, and Normans. It is sufficient to say, that most authorities are now agreed, in considering the ancient "Fyrd” of the Saxons as the first foundation of our army. According to Sir Francis Palgrave, in his Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, this "Fyrd" seems to have been a general levy in arms, of all classes of subjects, in the field, under penalties proportioned to the rank and fortune of each. This system was modified and regulated in some of its parts by Alfred the Great, and King Edward the Confessor. The Norman conquest superadded the institution of a feudal army, furnished by the tenants of Knights' fees: which really had some of the features of the modern system of a standing army, inasmuch as many of those composing the array remained for long periods together in arms, and received a money remuneration, or regular pay. But the old Saxon" Fyrd" was not the less carefully kept up with its limited and periodical terms of service, and its annual "exhibitious of arms" of the nature of the "wappenschaw," so graphically described by Sir Walter Scott, in his admirable Old Mortality.

Attempts, happily unsuccessful, were made from time to time in the long interval of centuries from the Norman Conquest down to the Revolution of 1688, to destroy the separated and independent character of this "Fyrd" or "militia" force, and blend it with the regularly hired and paid forces of the crown. But the stubborn constitutional spirit