第12章 POLITICAL CONDITIONS(7)

An army might be hired from Germany for the occasion.New regiments were generally raised by some great man who gave commissions to his own relations and dependants.When the Pretender was in Scotland,for example,fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles,who gave the commissions,and stipulated that although they were to be employed only in suppressing the rising,the officers should have permanent rank.(15)So,as was shown in Mrs Clarke's case,a patent for raising a regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker,who again might get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke.The officers had,according to the generally prevalent system,a modified property in their commissions;and the system of sale was not abolished till our own days.We may therefore say that the ruling class,on the one hand,objected to a standing army,and,on the other,since such an army was a necessity,farmed it from the country and were admitted to have a certain degree of private property in the concern.The prejudice against any permanent establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on occasion by all manner of questionable expedients.Bounties were offered to attract the vagrants who hung loose upon society.Smugglers,poachers,and the like were allowed to choose between military service and transportation.The general effect was to provide an army of blackguards commanded by gentlemen.The army no doubt had its merits as well as its defects.The continental armies which it met were collected by equally demoralising methods until the French revolution led to a systematic conion.The bad side is suggested by Napier's famous phrase,the 'cold shade of our aristocracy';while Napier gives facts enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even of the English blackguard.

By others,--by such men as the duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston,for example,types of the true aristocrat --the system was defended(16)as bringing men of good family into the army and so providing it,as the duke thought,with the best set of officers in Europe.No doubt they and the royal dukes who commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their business;but it may be admitted by a historian that they often showed the qualities of which Wellington was himself a type.The English officer was a gentleman before he was a soldier,and considered the military virtues to be a part of his natural endowment.But it was undoubtedly a part of his traditional code of honour to do his duty manfully and to do it rather as a manifestation of his own spirit than from any desire for rewards or decorations.

The same quality is represented more strikingly by the navy.The English admiral represents the most attractive and stirring type of heroism in our history.Nelson and the 'band of brothers'who served with him,the simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the whole duty of man in doing their best to crush the enemies of their country,are among the finest examples of single-souled devotion to the calls of patriotism.The navy,indeed,had its ugly side no less than the army.There was corruption at Greenwich(17)and in the dockyards,and parliamentary intrigue was a road to professional success.Voltaire notes the queer contrast between the English boast of personal liberty and the practice of filling up the crews by press gangs.The discipline was often barbarous,and the wrongs of the common sailor found sufficient expression in the mutiny at the Nore.A grievance,however,which pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of the case and the inertness of the administrative system.The navy did not excite the same jealousy as the army;and the officers were more professionally skilful than their brethren.The national qualities come out,often in their highest form,in the race of great seamen upon whom the security of the island power essentially depended.

V.THE CHURCH

I turn,however,to the profession which was more directly connected with the intellectual development of the country.The nature of the church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the social and political order on the other,though I do not presume to decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as cause.

What is the church of England?Some people apparently believe that it is a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers.This view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons,and,true or false,is no answer to the constitutional question.It does not enable us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers and politicians have to deal.

The best answer to such questions in ordinary case would be given by describing the organisation of the body concerned.We could then say what is the authority which speaks in its name;and what is the legislature which makes its laws,alters its arrangements,and defines the terms of membership.The supreme legislature of the church of England might appear to be parliament.It is the Act of Uniformity which defines the profession of belief exacted from the clergy;and no alteration could be made in regard to the rights and duties of the clergy except by parliamentary authority.The church might therefore be regarded as simply the religious department of the state.Since 1688,however,the theory and the practice of toleration had introduced difficulties.