Twice in every year our otherwise quiet village is thrown into a
ferment, which agitates its little community like an earthquake,
and unsettles all the habits of order and industry for which we are
usually remarkable. The cause of this great tumult is the militia
training--that system which supposes every citizen to be a soldier,
and undertakes to instruct him in the art and mystery of holding a
musket and putting the right foot foremost. On the last of these
occasions, I was surprised to find that my whole school had played
truant; and observing an unusual ferment in the streets, found,
upon inquiry, that at the last election for officer, Ezekiel Snip,
the village tailor, a man with fierce red whiskers and a peculiar
altitude of chin, had been elected captain. Ezekiel had dipt into
Duane's Hand-Book, and was esteemed profoundly skilled in the
manual exercise; so that the neighbours were all on the tiptoe of
expectation to witness the parade of the day. As this took place
opposite to my school-room, I seated myself quietly at the window
to watch how matters proceeded. About eight o'clock, the tavern
porch began to be filled with people, some bringing old rusty
rifles, others their fowling pieces, and some armed with a stout
oaken stick. Then sallied forth a valiant drummer, aided by a no
less valiant fifer, at the head of some dozens of the town boys,
to alarm the village. They marched up the street, and down the
street, and beat tantarara, and whistled out of all tune,--till my
head ached,--to the infinite delight of the idle urchins at their
heels, and the gaping housemaids at the doors and windows, as they
passed. When this preparatory ceremony was gone through, forth
issued captain Snip from the tavern door, in all the glory of a blue
coat, epaulettes, a sword and feather. The militia-men were then
ranged out in ranks, and the muster-roll called. I was particularly
struck with the assemblage present. I looked in vain for the most
respectable of our mechanics and neighbouring farmers.--The ranks
were chiefly filled with the idle young men of the village and the
tavern frequenters of the neighbourhood; in short, with men who
hung loose upon society, and were eager for every adventure that
would enable them to get through a day, without work, and might
end in a drinking match. Captain Snip bustled about with becoming
self-importance,--fixed this man six inches back, and that one
as much forward, and having thus ranged them _a la militaire_,
proceeded, by the aid of his Hand-Book, to induct them into the
manual exercise. At the word "Shoulder fire-locks," a scene of
confusion ensued. Some had their pieces on the right and some
on the left shoulder, and they were ranged at all angles from a
perpendicular to a horizontal line.--With infinite difficulty, and
after repeated trials, the captain got them to order and proceeded
to the next command. As he went on I observed that he became
impatient and confused; the disorder into which his company were
continually getting, surpassed his abilities to rectify, and his
limited and superficial knowledge began to fail him. He quite lost
his authority over his men; but by dint of storming, succeeded
at last in getting some how through the business. The drum then
sounded, and the gallant troop marched out to the commons, there to
encamp for the day, carrying in their train all the noisy and idle
boys of the town.
In the afternoon they again made their appearance, dusty, fatigued,
and disorderly, and after a sham exercise in the street, were
dismissed. It was a glorious day for the sellers of cakes, and
beer, and brandy, and whiskey. Many a bottle that day was emptied
of its fiery contents, and many a miserable wretch strengthened in
the habits of vice and dissipation. Scarce a man of this valiant
corps returned home sober. The tavern door was a scene of continued
quarrelling and the most shocking profanity, till eleven o'clock.
Battle succeeded battle, to the infinite diversion of the
by-standers, and to the edification and instruction of the lads of
all sizes that were thronging to this school of morality. I know not
how captain Snip felt upon descending to his ordinary employment,
from such a height of military glory, but I myself have been sad and
melancholy ever since, when I reflected upon the events of the day.
And what, fellow citizens, is the great good attained by these
militia trainings? It is the idlest of idle dreams to suppose
the recurrence, four times in the year, of such scenes as I have
described, can make soldiers of our yeomanry. It may make idlers,
it may make bullies, and drunkards, and gamblers of them; but what
they learn of military discipline, of the subordination of a camp,
is not worth a farthing candle. You lose to the state the labour of
a hundred thousand men, that they may be placed under the tuition
of some half-learned captain, who, perhaps, has never been in a
camp, and who does not, in the course of years, teach them more than
they could at any time learn as well and better in half a day's
real service. The good done to the state by these militia laws is
a mere shadow, and the wounds which they inflict upon the steady
habits, the industry and the morality of the country, are awful and
portentous. I believe I do not exceed probability in asserting, that
one half of the drunkenness in the state, is induced or confirmed at
these militia trainings.
But it is not only in the effects upon those who obey the mandate
of the law, that this system is to be deprecated. Look at it,
in what light you will, it is injurious and oppressive. A large
portion of your fellow citizens are men who will not, in any cause,
take the life or connive at the death of a fellow creature. They
believe that the great Author of being retains in his own hand the
power over life, and that it is impious in mortals to assume his
prerogative.--No matter how true or false this may be, it is with
them an article of religious faith, and as such is held sacred by
our constitution. Whatever law interferes with this article of
their belief is, to them, persecution. If man has no moral right
to take the life of his fellow, government can have no moral right
to oblige him to do it; and they who obey the law, in preference
to their conscience, are traitors to their God. If they obey your
military requisition, they become a party to a system altogether
at variance with their faith. They cannot pay the fines which you
impose for their refusal, for you demand them as an equivalent for
what they cannot concede to you. Here then are they placed, without
(according to their belief) the power of moving. If you insist upon
the payment, you must despoil them of their goods. It is to be sure
alleged, that the state cannot, with a due regard to its own safety,
dispense with the military allegiance of its citizens. Admit this
to be the case. Do you, in abstaining from the petty, alienating
vexations of a militia law in time of peace, yield or forego the
claim to this allegiance? You pass an edict oppressive to a class
of citizens, whose motive for non-compliance is sacred in the eye
of the constitution,--an edict, which your experience of the past
assures you, they will not comply with, and you create, in order
to enforce it, a race of harpies, who are trained under it in all
the arts of oppression and plunder. And to what good end? Does one
solitary dollar of these militia exactions pass into your treasury?
Is it not, on the contrary, a well known fact, that after seizing
upon twice or thrice the just amount of the claim, the proceeds
of the sale of these goods melt away before they reach the public
treasury? The ostensible object of the law is to train the yeomenry
in the art of war. My word for it, its actual operation is more
to enervate than to strengthen, and while it forms a dark blot on
the escutcheon of our state, there is not, in its consequences, a
single salutary effect to compensate for the hardships it inflicts
upon the followers of the great statesman, who laid the foundations
of our public and private prosperity, our liberal institutions; of
all, in short, which has rendered Pennsylvania the boast and the
envy of nations.