The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Volume 10

[The question at last was put, that the new-raised troops be incorporated into the standing corps, but it passed in the negative, 232 to 166.]

HOUSE OF LORDS, DEC. 9, 1740

DEBATE ON TAKING THE STATE OF THE ARMY INTO CONSIDERATION

The duke of ARGYLE rose first, and spoke to the following effect:—My lords, as the present situation of our affairs may require an augmentation of our forces, and as the success of our arms, and the preservation of our liberties, may equally depend upon the manner in which the new forces shall be raised, there is, in my opinion, no question more worthy the attention of this august assembly, than what may be the most proper method of increasing our army.

On this question, my lords, I shall offer my own sentiments with greater confidence, as there are few men who have had more opportunities of being acquainted with it in its whole extent, as I have spent great part of my life in the field and in the camp. I commanded a regiment under king William, and have long been either the first, or almost the first man in the army.

I hope, my lords, it will be allowed, without difficulty, that I have, at least, been educated at the best school of war, and that nothing but natural incapacity can have hindered me from making some useful observations upon the discipline and government of armies, and the advantages and inconveniencies of the various plans upon which other nations regulate their forces.

I have always maintained, my lords, that it is necessary, in the present state of the neighbouring countries, to keep up a body of regular troops, that we may not be less able to defend ourselves, than our enemies to attack us.

It is well known, my lords, that states must secure themselves by different means, as they are threatened by dangers of different kinds: policy must be opposed by policy, and force by force; our fleets must be increased when our neighbours grow formidable by their naval power, and armies must be maintained at a time like this, in which every prince on the continent estimates his greatness by the number of his troops.

But an army, my lords, as it is to be admitted only for the security of the nation, is to be so regulated, that it may produce the end for which it is established; that it may be useful without danger, and protect the people without oppressing them.

To this purpose, my lords, it is indispensably necessary, that the military subordination be inviolably preserved, and that discipline be discreetly exercised without any partial indulgence, or malicious severities; that every man be promoted according to his desert, and that military merit alone give any pretensions to military preferment.

To make the army yet more useful, it ought to be under the sole command of one man, exalted to the important trust by his known skill, courage, justice, and fidelity, and uncontrouled in the administration of his province by any other authority, a man enabled by his experience to distinguish the deserving, and invested with power to reward them.

Thus, my lords, ought an army to be regulated, to which the defence of a nation is intrusted, nor can any other scheme be formed which will not expose the publick to dangers more formidable than revolutions or invasions. And yet, my lords, how widely those who have assumed the direction of affairs have deviated from this method is well known. It is known equally to the highest and meanest officers, that those who have most opportunities of observing military merit, have no power of rewarding it; and, therefore, every man endeavours to obtain other recommendations than those of his superiours in the army, and to distinguish himself by other services than attention to his duty, and obedience to his commanders.

Our generals, my lords, are only colonels with a higher title, without power, and without command; they can neither make themselves loved nor feared in their troops, nor have either reward or punishment in their power. What discipline, my lords, can be established by men, whom those who sometimes act the farce of obedience, know to be only phantoms of authority, and to be restrained by an arbitrary minister from the exercise of those commissions which they are invested with? And what is an army without discipline, subordination, and obedience? What, but a rabble of licentious vagrants, set free from the common restraints of decency, exempted from the necessity of labour, betrayed by idleness to debauchery, and let loose to prey upon the people? Such a herd can only awe the villages, and bluster in the streets, but can never be able to oppose an enemy, or defend the nation by which they are supported.

They may, indeed, form a camp upon some of the neighbouring heaths, or pass in review with tolerable regularity; they may sometimes seize a smuggler, and sometimes assist a constable with vigour and success. But unhappy would be the people, who had no other force to oppose against an army habituated to discipline, of which every one founds his hopes of honour and reward upon the approbation of the commander.

That no man will labour to no purpose, or undergo the fatigue of military vigilance, without an adequate motive; that no man will endeavour to learn superfluous duties, and neglect the easiest road to honour and to wealth, merely for the sake of encountering difficulties, is easily to be imagined. And, therefore, my lords, it cannot be conceived, that any man in the army will very solicitously apply himself to the duties of his profession, of which, when he has learned them, the most accurate practice will avail him nothing, and on which he must lose that time, which might, have been employed in gaining an interest in a borough, or in forming an alliance with some orator in the senate.

For nothing, my lords, is now considered but senatorial interest, nor is any subordination desired but in the supreme council of the empire. For the establishment of this new regulation, the honours of every profession are prostituted, and every commission is become merely nominal. To gratify the leaders of the ministerial party, the most despicable triflers are exalted to an authority, and those whose want of understanding excludes them from any other employment, are selected for military commissions.

No sooner have they taken possession of their new command, and gratified with some act of oppression the wantonness of new authority, but they desert their charge with the formality of demanding a permission to be absent, which their commander dares not deny them. Thus, my lords, they leave the care of the troops, and the study of the rules of war, to those unhappy men who have no other claim to elevation than knowledge and bravery, and who, for want of relations in the senate, are condemned to linger out their lives at their quarters, amuse themselves with recounting their actions and sufferings in former wars, and with reading in the papers of every post, the cormissions which are bestowed on those who never saw a battle.

For this reason, my lords, preferments in the army, instead of being considered as proofs of merit, are looked on only as badges of dependence; nor can any thing be inferred from the promotion of an officer, but that he is in some degree or other allied to some member of the senate, or the leading voters of a borough.

After this manner, my lords, has the army been modelled, and on these principles has it subsisted for the last and the present reign; neither myself, nor any other general officer, have been consulted in the distribution of commands, or any part of military regulations. Our armies have known no other power than that of the secretary of war, who directs all their motions, and fills up every vacancy without opposition, and without appeal.

But never, my lords, was his power more conspicuous, than in raising the levies of last year; never was any authority more despotically exerted, or more tamely submitted to; never did any man more wantonly sport with his command, or more capriciously dispose of posts and preferments; never did any tyrant appear to set censure more openly at defiance, treat murmurs and remonstrances with greater contempt, or with more confidence and security distribute posts among his slaves, without any other reason of preference than his own uncontroulable pleasure.

And surely no man, my lords, could have made choice of such wretches for military commands, but to show that nothing but his own private inclinations should influence his conduct, and that he considered himself as supreme and unaccountable: for we have seen, my lords, the same animals to-day cringing behind a counter, and to-morrow swelling in a military dress; we have seen boys sent from school in despair of improvement, and intrusted with military command; fools that cannot learn their duty, and children that cannot perform it, have been indiscriminately promoted; the dross of the nation has been swept together to compose our new forces, and every man who was too stupid or infamous to learn or carry on a trade, has been placed, by this great disposer of honours, above the necessity of application, or the reach of censure.

Did not sometimes indignation, and sometimes pity, check the sallies of mirth, it would not be a disagreeable entertainment, my lords, to observe, in the park, the various appearances of these raw commanders, when they are exposing their new scarlet to view, and strutting with the first raptures of sudden elevation; to see the mechanick new-modelling his mien, and the stripling tottering beneath the weight of his cockade; or to hear the conversation of these new adventurers, and the instructive dialogues of schoolboys and shopkeepers.

I take this opportunity, my lords, of clearing myself from any suspicion of having contributed, by my advice, to this stupendous collection. I only once interposed with the recommendation of a young gentleman, who had learned his profession in two campaigns among the Muscovians, and whom yet neither his own desert, nor my patronage could advance to a commission. And, I believe, my lords, all the other general officers were equally unconsulted, and would, if their advice had been asked, equally have disapproved the measures that have been pursued.

But thus, my lords, were our new regiments completed, in which, of two hundred and fifty officers who have subsisted upon half-pay, only thirty-six have been promoted, though surely they might have pleaded a juster claim to employment, who had learned their profession in the service of their country, and had long languished in penury, than those who had neither knowledge nor capacity, who had neither acted nor suffered any thing, and who might have been destined to the hammer or the plough, without any disreputation to their families, or disappointment to themselves.

I have been told, indeed, my lords, that to some of these officers commissions were offered, which they refused, and for this refusal every reason is alleged but the true: some, indeed, excused themselves as disabled by age and infirmities from military service; nor can any objection be made to so just a plea. For how could those be refused in their age the comforts of ease and repose, who have served their country with their youth and vigour?

Others there are, my lords, who refused commissions upon motives very different, in which, nevertheless, some justice cannot be denied. They who had long studied and long practised their profession; they, who had tried their courage in the breach, and given proofs of their skill in the face of the enemy, refused to obey the command of novices, of tradesmen, and of schoolboys: they imagined, my lords, that they ought to govern those whom they should be obliged to instruct, and to lead those troops whom they must range in order. But they had forgot that they had outlived the time when a soldier was formed by study and experience, and had not heard, in their retreats, that a colonel or a captain was now formed in a day; and, therefore, when they saw and heard their new commanders, they retired back to their half-pay, with surprise and indignation.

But, my lords, the follies of last year cannot be easily rectified, and are only now to be exposed that they may not be repeated. If we are now to make new levies, and increase the number of our land-forces, it is, in my opinion, incumbent upon us to consider by what methods we may best augment our troops, and how we may be able to resist our foreign enemies, without exposing the nation to intestine miseries, and leaving our liberties at the mercy of the court.

There are, my lords, two methods of increasing our forces; the first is, that of raising new regiments; the other, of adding new men to those which already subsist.

By raising new regiments, my lords, we shall only gratify the minister with the distribution of new commissions, and the establishment of new dependents; we shall enlarge the influence of the court, and increase the charge of the nation, which is already loaded with too many taxes to support any unnecessary expense.

By the other method, of adding a hundred men to every company, we shall not only save the pay of the officers, which is no slight consideration, but what seems, if the reports raised by the ministry of our present danger be true, of far more importance, shall form the new forces with more expedition into regular troops; for, by distributing them among those who are already instructed in their duty, we shall give them an opportunity of hourly improvement; every man's comrade will be his master, and every one will be ambitious of forming himself by the example of those who have been in the army longer than themselves.

If it be objected, my lords, that the number of officers will not then bear a just proportion to that of the soldiers, it may be answered, that the foreign troops of the greatest reputation have no greater number of officers, as every one must know who is acquainted with the constitution of the most formidable armies of Europe. Those of the Prussian monarch, or of the various nations by which we were assisted in the late war, either as confederates or mercenaries, have but few officers. And I very well remember, my lords, that whenever they were joined by parties of our own nation, the inequality in the number of the officers produced contests and disputes.

The only troops of Europe, my lords, that swarm with officers, are those of France, but even these have fewer officers, in proportion to their private men, in time of war; for when they disband any part of their forces, they do not, like us, reduce their officers to half-pay, but add them to the regiments not reduced, that the families of their nobility may not be burdened with needy dependents, and that they may never want officers for new levies.

There are many reasons, my lords, that make this practice in France more reasonable than it would be in our kingdom. It is the chief view of their governours to continue absolute, and therefore their constant endeavour to keep great numbers in dependence; it ought to be our care to hinder the increase of the influence of the court, and to obstruct all measures that may extend the authority of the ministry, and therefore those measures are to be pursued by which independence and liberty will be most supported.

It is likewise to be remembered, my lords, that a French officer is supported with pay not much larger than that of a private soldier among us, and that, therefore, the argument which arises from the necessity of frugality is not of the same force in both nations.

There is yet another reason why the French are under the necessity of employing more officers than any other nation: the strength of their armies consists in their gentlemen, who cannot be expected to serve without some command: the common soldiers of the French army are a mean, spiritless, despicable herd, fit only to drudge as pioneers, to raise intrenchments, and to dig mines, but without courage to face an enemy, or to proceed with vigour in the face of danger.

Their gentlemen, my lords, are of a very different character; jealous of their honour, and conscious of their birth, eager of distinction, and ambitious of preferment. They have, commonly, their education in the army, and have no expectations of acquiring fortunes equal to their desires by any other profession, and are, therefore, intent upon the improvement of every opportunity which is offered them of increasing their knowledge and exalting their reputation.

To the spirit of these men, my lords, are the French armies indebted for all their victories, and to them is to be attributed the present perfection of the art of war. They have the vigilance and perseverance of Romans joined with the natural vivacity and expedition of their own nation.

We are, therefore, not to wonder, my lords, that there is in the French armies an establishment for more gentlemen than in other countries, where the disparity between the military virtues of the higher and lower classes of men is less conspicuous. In the troops of that nation nothing is expected but from the officers, but in ours the common soldier meets danger with equal intrepidity, and scorns to see himself excelled by his officer in courage or in zeal.

We are, therefore, my lords, under no necessity of burdening our country with the expense of new commissions, which, in the army, will be superfluous, and, in the state, dangerous, as they will fill our senate with new dependents, and our corporations with new adherents to the minister, whose steady perseverance in his favourite scheme of senatorial subordination, will be, perhaps, the only occasion of these new levies, or, at least, has hindered the right application of our standing troops. For what reason, my lords, can invention or imagination assign, why the troops, who had been for some time disciplined, were not rather sent to the assistance of Vernon than the new marines, except that some of them were commanded by men who had obtained seats in the other house, and who, by their settled adherence and avowed fidelity to the minister, had recommended themselves too powerfully to be rashly exposed in the service of their country to the bullets of the Spaniards.

So great, my lords, has been the minister's regard to senatorial abilities, and so strict his gratitude to his friends, that I know of but one member of the other house that has been hazarded in this expedition, and he a hopeless, abandoned patriot, insensible of the capacity or integrity of our ministry, and whom nothing has been able to reconcile to our late measures. He, therefore, who has never exerted himself in defence of the ministry, was, in his turn, thought unworthy of ministerial protection, and was given up to the chance of war without reluctance.

But I hope your lordships will concur with me in the opinion, that it is not always necessary to gratify the ministry, but that our country claims some part of our regard, and, therefore, that in establishing our army we should pursue that method which may be most accommodated to our constitution, and, instead of imitating the military policy of the French, follow the example of those nations by whose troops they have been conquered.

Had this scheme been hitherto followed, had our new levies, instead of being put under the command of boys, been distributed in just proportions among the standing regiments, where they might soon have been qualified for service by the inspection of experienced officers, we might now have seen an army capable of awing the court of Spain into submission, or, if our demands had been still refused, of revenging our injuries, and punishing those who have insulted and despised us.

From an army thus raised and disciplined, detachments, my lords, ought to have been sent on board of all our fleets, and particularly that which is now stationed in the Mediterranean, which would not then have coasted about from one port to another, without hurting or frighting the enemy, but might, by sudden descents, have spread terrour through a great part of the kingdom, harassed their troops by continual marches, and, by frequent incursions, have plundered all the maritime provinces, driven the inhabitants into the inland country, and laid the villages in ashes.

There is yet, my lords, no appearance of a peace, for our success has not enabled us to prescribe terms, and I hope we are not yet fallen so low as to receive them; it is, therefore, proper to form such resolutions as may influence the conduct of the war, and enable us to retrieve the errours of our past measures.

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