[1] Mr H. P. Hain Friswell has pointed out that the word "impression"
occurs frequently in Chevreul's book on colour; but it is also
current among the critics. See Ruskin's chapter on Turner's
composition--"impression on the mind."
IMPRESSMENT, the name given in English to the exercise of the authority
of the state to "press"[1] or compel the service of the subject for the
defence of the realm. Every sovereign state must claim and at times
exercise this power. The "drafting" of men for service in the American
Civil War was a form of impressment. All the monarchical, or republican,
governments of Europe have employed the press at one time or another.
All forms of conscription, including the English ballot for the militia,
are but regulations of this sovereign right. In England impressment may
be looked upon as an erratic, and often oppressive, way of enforcing the
common obligation to serve in "the host" or in the _posse comitatus_
(power of the county). In Scotland, where the feudal organization was
very complete in the Lowlands, and the tribal organization no less
complete in the Highlands, and where the state was weak, impressment was
originally little known. After the union of the two parliaments in 1707,
no distinction was made between the two divisions of Great Britain. In
England the kings of the Plantagenet dynasty caused Welshmen to be
pressed by the Lords Marchers, and Irish kerns to be pressed by the
Lords Deputy, for their wars in France. Complaints were made by
parliament of the oppressive use of this power as early as the reign of
Edward III., but it continued to be exercised. Readers of Shakespeare
will remember Sir John Falstaff's commission to press soldiers, and the
manner, justified no doubt by many and familiar examples of the way in
which the duty was performed. A small sum called imprest-money, or coat
and conduct money, was given to the men when pressed to enable them to
reach the appointed rendezvous. Soldiers were secured in this way by
Queen Elizabeth, by King Charles I., and by the parliament itself in the
Civil War. The famous New Model Army of Cromwell was largely raised by
impressment. Parliament ordered the county committees to select recruits
of "years meet for their employment and well clothed." After the
Revolution of 1688 parliament occasionally made use of this resource. In
1779 a general press of all rogues and vagabonds in London to be drafted
into the regiments was ordered. It is said that all who were not too
lame to run away or too destitute to bribe the parish constable were
swept into the net. As they were encouraged to desert by the undisguised
connivance of the officers and men who were disgusted with their
company, no further attempt to use the press for the army was made.
A distinction between the liability of sailors and of other men dates
from the 16th century. From an act of Philip and Mary (1556) it appears
that the watermen of the Thames claimed exemption from the press as a
privileged body. They were declared liable, and the liability was
clearly meant to extend to service as a soldier on shore. In the fifth
year of Queen Elizabeth (1563) an act was passed to define the liability
of the sailors. It is known as "an Act touching politick considerations
for the maintenance of the Navy." By its term all fishermen and mariners
were protected from being compelled "to serve as any soldiers upon the
Land or upon the Sea, otherwise than as a mariner, except it shall be to
serve under any Captain of some ship or vessel, for landing to do some
special exploit which mariners have been used to do." The operation of
the act was limited to ten years, but it was renewed repeatedly, and was
at last indefinitely prolonged in the sixteenth year of the reign of
Charles I. (1631). By the Vagrancy Act of the close of Queen Elizabeth's
reign (1597), disorderly serving-men and other disreputable characters,
of whom a formidable list is given, were declared to be liable to be
impressed for service in the fleet. The "Takers," as they were called in
early times, the Press Gang of later days, were ordered to present their
commission to two justices of the peace, who were bound to pick out
"such sufficient number of able men, as in the said commission shall be
contained, to serve Her Majesty as aforesaid." The justices of the peace
in the coast districts, who were often themselves concerned in the
shipping trade, were not always zealous in enforcing the press. The
pressed sailors often deserted with the "imprest money" given them. Loud
complaints were made by the naval officers of the bad quality of the men
sent up to serve in the king's ships. On the other hand, the Press Gangs
were accused of extorting money, and of making illegal arrests. In the
reign of Queen Anne (1703) an act was passed "for the increase of Seamen
and the better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the
Coal Trade." The act which gave parish authorities power to apprentice
boys to the sea exempted the apprentices from the press for three years,
and until the age of eighteen. It especially reaffirmed the part of the
Vagrancy Act of Elizabeth's reign which left rogues and vagabonds
subject to be pressed for the sea service. By the act for the "Increase
of Mariners and Seamen to navigate Merchant Ships and other trading
ships or vessels," passed in the reign of George II. (1740), all men
over fifty-five were exempted from the press together with lads under
eighteen, foreigners serving in British ships (always numerous in war
time), and landsmen who had gone to sea during their first two years.
The act for "the better supplying of the cities of London and
Westminster with fish" gave exemption to all masters of fishing-boats,
to four apprentices and one mariner to each boat, and all landsmen for
two years, except in case of actual invasion. By the act for the
encouragement of insurance passed in 1774, the fire insurance companies
in London were entitled to secure exemption for thirty watermen each in
their employment. Masters and mates of merchant vessels, and a
proportion of men per ship in the colliers trading from the north to
London, were also exempt.
Subject to such limitations as these, all seafaring men, and watermen
on rivers, were liable to be pressed between the ages of eighteen and
fifty-five, and might be pressed repeatedly for so long as their
liability lasted. The rogue and vagabond element were at the mercy of
the justices of the peace. The frightful epidemics of fever which
desolated the navy till late in the 18th century were largely due to the
infection brought by the prisoners drafted from the ill-kept jails of
the time. As service in the fleet was most unpopular with the sailors,
the press could often only be enforced by making a parade of strength
and employing troops. The men had many friends who were always willing
to conceal them, and they themselves became expert in avoiding capture.
There was, however, one way of procuring them which gave them no chance
of evasion. The merchant ships were stopped at sea and the sailors taken
out. This was done to a great extent, more especially in the case of
homeward-bound vessels. On one occasion, in 1802, an East Indiaman on
her way home was deprived of so many of her crew by a man of war in the
Bay of Biscay that she was unable to resist a small French privateer,
and was carried off as a prize with a valuable cargo. The press and the
jails failed to supply the number of men required. In 1795 it was found
necessary to impose on the counties the obligation to provide "a quota"
of men, at their own expense. The local authorities provided the
recruits by offering high bounties, often to debtors confined in the
prisons. These desperate men were a very bad element in the navy. In
1797 they combined with the United Irishmen, of whom large numbers had
been drafted into the fleet as vagabonds, to give a very dangerous
political character to the mutinies at the Nore and on the south of
Ireland. After the conclusion of the great Napoleonic wars in 1815 the
power of the press was not again exercised. In 1835 an act was passed
during Sir James Graham's tenure of office as first lord of the
admiralty, by which men who had once been pressed and had served for a
period of five years were to be exempt from impressment in future. Sir
James, however, emphatically reaffirmed the right of the crown to
enforce the service of the subject, and therefore to impress the seamen.
The introduction of engagements for a term of five years in 1853, and
then of long service, has produced so large a body of voluntary
recruits, and service in the navy is so popular, that the question has
no longer any interest save an historical one. If compulsory service in
the fleet should again become necessary it will not be in the form of
the old system of impressment, which left the sailor subject to
compulsory service from the age of eighteen to fifty-five, and flooded
the navy with the scum of the jails and the workhouse.
AUTHORITIES.--Grose's _Military Antiquities_, for the general subject
of impressment, vol. ii. p. 73 et seq. S. R. Gardiner gives many
details in his history of James I. and Charles I., and in _The Civil
War_. The acts relating to the navy are quoted in _A Collection of the
Statutes relating to the Admiralty_, &c., published in 1810. Some
curious information is in the papers relating to the Brest Blockade
edited by John Leyland for the Navy Record Society. Sir James Graham's
speech is in Hansard for 1835. (D. H.)