Great Britain, on the contrary, is limited in her recruiting-grounds by
modern political relations as respects Europe: she _has_ formed an
excellent foreign corps long ago in the Mediterranean; a Hessian corps
in America; an admirable Hanoverian legion during the late war. But
circumstances too often prevent her relying (as the Romans did) on the
perfection of her military _system_ so far as to dispense with native
materials; except, indeed, in the East, where the Roman principle is
carried out to the widest extent, needing only one-tenth of British by
way of model and inspiration under circumstances of peculiar trial! In
African stations also, in the West Indies and on the American continent
(as in Honduras), England proceeds (though insufficiently) upon this
fine Roman principle, making her theory, her discipline, and the network
of her rules do the work of her own too costly hands. She, like Rome,
finds the benefit of her fine system chiefly in the dispensation which
it facilitates from working with any exhaustible fund of means.
Excellent must be that workmanship which can afford to be careless about
its materials; yet still--where naturally and essentially it must be
said that _materiem superabat opus_, because one section of our martial
service moves by nautical soldiers, and with respect to the other half
because it is necessary to meet European troops by men of British
blood--we cannot, for European purposes, look to any other districts
than our own native _officinæ_ of population. The Life Guards (1st
regiment) and the Blues (2nd) recruit chiefly, or did so thirty years
ago, in Yorkshire. This is a manufacturing county, though in a mode of
manufacturing which escapes many evils of the factory system. And
generally we are little disposed pedantically to disparage towns as
funds of a good soldiery. Men of mighty bone and thews, sons of Anak, to
our own certain knowledge, arise in Kendal, Wakefield, Bradford and
Leeds; huge men, by thousands, amongst the spinners and weavers of
Glasgow, Paisley, etc., well able to fight their way through battalions
of clod-hoppers whose talk is of oxen. But, unless in times subject to
special distress, it is not so easy to tempt away the weaver from his
loom as the delver from his spade. We believe the reason to be, that the
monotony of a rustic life is more oppressive to those who have limited
resources than the corresponding monotony of a town life. For this
reason, and for many others, it is certain--and perhaps (unless we get
to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through
centuries--that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies,
England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble
yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are
found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish
Lowlands, of those elegantly-formed men who are found in Devonshire,
Cornwall, etc., of those _hardy_ men (a feature in human physics still
more important) who are found in every district--if many are now
resident in towns, most of them originated in rustic life; and from
rustic life it is that the reservoir of towns is permanently fed. Rome
was, England never will be, independent of her rural population. Rome
never had a yeomanry, Rome never had a race of country gentlemen;
England has both upon a scale so truly noble that it will be the
simplest expression of that nobility to say, pointing to our villages,
'Behold the cradle of our army!' as inversely to say, pointing to that
army: 'Behold the manhood of our villages!' As regards Rome, from the
bisection of the Roman territory into two several corn districts
depending upon a separate agriculture, it results that _her_ wealth
could not be defeated and transferred; secondly, it results from the
total subjection of Egypt, that no embargo _could_ be laid on the
harvests of the Nile, and no famine _could_ be organized against Rome;
thirdly, it results that the Roman military system was thus not liable
to be affected by any dependency upon foreign grain. On the argument
that this dependency had _always_ been proceeding gradually in Italy, so
as virtually to reimburse itself by _vicarious_ culture, whereas in
England the transition from independency to dependency, being
accomplished (if at all) in one day by Act of Parliament, would be
ruinously abrupt; and also on the argument _B_, that Rome, if slowly
losing any recruiting districts at home, found compensatory districts
all round the Mediterranean, whilst England could find no such
compensatory districts--we deny that the circumstances of the Roman corn
trade have _ever_ been stated truly; and we expect the thanks of our
readers for drawing their attention to this outline of the points which
essentially differenced it from the modern corn trade of England.
England must, but Rome could _not_, reap from a foreign corn dependency:
firstly, ruinous disturbance to the natural expansions of her wealth;
secondly, famine by intervals for her vast population; thirdly,
impoverishment to her recruiting service. These are the dreadful evils
(some uniform, some contingent) which England would inherit of her
native agriculture, but which Rome escaped under that partial transfer,
never really accomplished. Meantime, let the reader remember that it is
Rome, and not England--Rome historically, not England politically--which
forms the _object_ of our exposure. England is but the _means_ of the
illustration.
In our own days wars in their ebbs and flows are but another name for
the resources of the national exchequer, or expressions of its
artificial facilities for turning those resources to account. The great
artifice of anticipation applied to national income--an artifice sure to
follow where civilization has expanded, and which would have arisen to
Rome had her civilization been either (_A_) completely developed, or
(_B_) expanded originally from a true radix--has introduced a new era
into national history. The man who, having had property, invests in the
Funds, and divides between his grandchildren and the five subsequent
generations what will yield them subsistence, is the author of an
expansive improvement which has been enjoyed by all in turn, and with
more fixed assurance in the last case than in the first. He is a public
benefactor in more ways than appears on the surface: he takes the most
efficient guarantees against needless wars.
Captain Jenkins's ears[26] might have been redeemed at a less price; but
still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was
certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the
conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for
every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps
you will say _this_ was no great improvement on the old. No; not in
_appearance_, it may be; but that was because war had to open a field
which mere diplomacy, unsupported by the sword, could not open, and
secured what we may well call a _moral_ result in the eye of the whole
world, which diplomacy could not secure in our guilty Europe. But was
that, you ask, a condition to be contemplated with complete
satisfaction? No; nor is it right that it should. But the dawn of a new
era is approaching, for which that may have done its installment of
preparation. Not that war will cease for many generations, but that it
will continually move more in greater subjection to national laws and
Christian opinion. Nevermore will it be excited by mere court intrigue,
or even by ministerial necessities. No more will a quarrel between two
ladies about a pair of gloves, or a fit of ill-temper in a prince toward
his minister, call forth the dread scourge by way of letting off
personal irritation or redressing the balance of parties.
_Funding_, therefore, was a great step in advance; and even already we
have only to look into the Exchequer in order to read the possibilities,
the ebbs and flows of war beforehand. This consideration of money, it is
true--even as the sinews of war--was not so great in ancient history.
And the reason is evident. Kings did not then go to war _by_ money, but
_for_ money. They did not look into the Exchequer for the means of a
campaign, but they looked into a campaign for the means of an Exchequer.
Yet even in these nations, more of their history, of their doings and
sufferings, lay in their economy than anywhere else. The great Oriental
phantoms, such as the Pharaohs and the Sargons, did, it is true, bring
nations to war without much more care for the commissariat department
than is given in the battles of the Kites and Daws. Yet even there the
political economy made itself felt, obscurely and indirectly it may be,
but really and effectively, acting by laws that varied their force
rather to the eye than to the understanding, and presented indeed a
final restraining force to these kings also. For examine these wars,
fabulous as they are; look into the when, the whence, the how; into the
duration of the campaigns, into their objects, and into the quality of
the troops, into the circumstances under which they were trained and
fought, and this will abundantly appear.
Certainly, the commissariat which we do by foresight, they did by brute
efforts of power; but the leading economical laws which are now clear to
us, and which, with full perception of their inevitable operation, we
take into account, made themselves felt in the last result if only then
blindly realized; and in the fact that these laws are now clearly
apprehended lies the prevailing reason that modern wars must, on the
side alike of the commissariat and of social effects in various
directions, be widely different from war in ancient times.