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Leader (1850-1860), 24th February 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 16, OUR PRESTIGE IN EUROPE. Human nature is ...

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      Military Promotion By Birth. The Treatme...

      But it is not so . Certain posts are kept For <« gentlemen , " with a very vulgar test of gentle Tbirth ; and those who cannot undergo the test are disqualified , though they have a right to Bear arms without stain or abatement ^—which is more than some of our aristocracy could say if heralds did their duty . A single case will illustrate our meaning ; and from its nature it will be seen to he only one of a class in a host of abuses where there are many classes . A young gentleman is educated at a public school , goes to college , and at every stage in

      his progress takes such honours as show that his attainments are worthy of higher tests . He studies engineering , and has an ambition to avail himself of the new " opening , " by which students at the established schools are admitted to the Woolwich Academy for six months' probationary study before entering the corps of Royal Engineers . The testimonials of the candidate are absolutely conclusive as to his eligibility ; but he is stopped at the first question . He applies for admission . The official

      asks——Not what the youth ' s attainments are , what his training , his qualities , or his health ; not anything about himself at all ; but ¦ : "Was your father in business ?" " Yes , " is the answer ; and the door is closed against the youth ! His father was " in business" — he may without exaggeration——when we compare what lie found and what he left—be said to have organised the trade of the Shetland Isles ; and he accomplished an enterprise which proved him to be a man of energy , invention ^ and high spirit —just the qualities that a cadet of the Royal

      [ Engineers should inherit . But to have been ' in business" is to be not a gentlemanthough Lord Tobrington , a railway chairman , is a gentleman and something more ; 'Lord Londonderry is a gentleman though a coaldealer ; and Lord Cjlanbicarde would not be excluded on lAal account from the Royal CngineersI The young man applies to an officer in command , states his case , and is advised not to attempt perseverance . Evidently the worthy old Epaulettes thinks that a young gentleman who is * iot " a gentleman" ought not to be admitted . ' * ~ - — - -

      Now are men born engineers by the rules of the Herald ' s college , or by the rules of a much higher college ? For it strikes us , that if the Hoyal Engineers are selected according to the exclusively " gentle" station of their fathers , Sebastopol is no mystery , nor likely to be the last of commentaries on that mode of selecting of Engineers .

      I64i T Ie Lib A B Es. [Satobpay,

      i 64 i T IE liB A B ES . [ Satobpay ,

      Our Prestige In Europe. Human Nature Is ...

      OUR PRESTIGE IN EUROPE . Human nature is so made ,. and it would be waste of time to repine thereat . The French —at least such or them as have not joined the opposition of silence and patience , the 3 ? rench of the official and venal species—are fiLBcretly exulting over our discomfiture in the Crimea . They now believe , perhaps with aome semblance of reason , that England has ceased to be a first-rate Power . We are shining , fiery , but dim and artificially magnified , for down on the western slope of the heavens . There can be iSbw no further doubt about it ; we are , indeed , a nation of Shopkeepers , and nothing else ; capable , perhaps , of a vigorous , though vain attempt to defend our T ) lflfco-i ? lftss and our four-ribst

      bedsteads if directly attacked , but too incompetent , too ill-constructed , too steeped in ittere questions of profit and loss , too suffoottted with wealth , too fond of ease and our dt itte to be worth a jot as allies in a great Wft * . John Bull , poised on legs of Egyptian proportion , may stand on his threshold or ¦ top to the * rartwstone , and give one sturdy

      blow with his fist ; but take him out for a campaign , and he pants and chokes , and indulges in harmless martial pantomime miles behind . There was a letter from the scene of war read the other . night in a Parisian salon . " ¥ e should have done the work , ' * it said , " but for the English and the Turks . "Is it come to that coupling ? - — " It is impossible to act with such people . They are never ready" We are not cowards , only stupid and slow ! . We know what stress is really to be laid

      on this opinion , but it would be very to dissimulate the fact of its existence and rapid spread , not only through Erance , but over the whole Continent . It may come to constitute a great danger . At least one half of a nation ' s power consists in the prestige that surrounds it . A . man of honour , courage , and strength may fight his way through a crowd which , if it ever learned to despise , could crush him at once . Is it not worth while , instead of trusting any longer to the vast latent resources of Anglo-Saxon energy

      —no doubt capable of bringing us safe through far greater dangers than we have yet encountered—to do something at once calculated to give a different direction to the current of public opinion abroad , and to save this country from the attacks of the Coalition ofJSnvy , which may be nearer in possibility than we like to believe ? Within the last few weeks it has become an article of Continental faith—greedily accepted—that the last Englishman to be feared or respected fell at Alma or Inkerman , or is freezing to death in the peninsula of Cherson . We have no longer , it is said ,

      either an army or the means of getting one together . How this strange result has been brought about is a mystery . No one can understand why , in a country which has made so much boast of its warlike enthusiasm , which has thundered in monster meetings , emptied out its purse in subscriptions , and shaken the sides of the world by the clamour of its press , recruits more numerous than the Government can manage do not pour in . There is certainly at first sight a sufficiently

      broad contradiction between our talk and our ^ performanceJB -JM ? L . ?!??!! P ® 5 J ' v , ^ nl ? ss *^ e apostles of peace at any price have a greater hold than seems likely on the classes whence the raw material of armies is drawn , it must be admitted that there exist artificial reasons by which the people are separated in feeling froni the ( Government . What these reasons are , no calm observer of public affairs here & % home can fail to perceive ; but they are perfectly inappreciable abroad where

      people wait only for the practical results that ought to follow on national bluster;—and so the report goes round : England '& glory is on the wane . There is probably some slight want of good faith in those who propagate this opinion . At any rate they are ignorant of the stuff of which soldiers are made , and of the way in which they are made . In former years the English army , which has done so many fine things , was recruited from the ranks ot idleness , of misery , and of crime . Tall ,

      rawboned youths were lured into the arena like bulls by a bit of Bcarlet cloth . Discontented sons and disappointed lovers started on the heroic road through mere spite , stupified during the first irrevocable steps by beer and gin . No one can regret the fact , if it be true , that these causes have ceased to operate in so great a degree ; and surely in the vast multitude of human motives . there may be found others quite as operative , and more respectable . But we cannot expect to get new men with the old machinery ; people think nowadays before allowing their palms to be tickled by the shilling ; they know what

      they are doing , and would like to know whither they are going ; and , although forei gn statesmen and diplomatists—sharing the opinion of our short-sighted and selfish governing classes—may deride the idea of a reform , and tell us that the necessity \ re plead is a sign of decay , we must not accept these interested suggestions . He who laughs at reform fears it . ¦

      A vague rumour has been circulated that some of our boldest statesmen have discussed , at Imperial suggestion , though for the present they have rejected , the idea of introducing the conscription into England . In Paris , those who affect to wish us well cannot see that we have any other alternative . Either we must submit to that degradation , or perish . This is nonsense . Let our friends be quite sure , at any rate , that until all other reasonable

      measures have been tried , England will not receive any such proposition , except with derision . Yet , no doubt many of our wise governors—wise in their own interest—¦ would prefer even taking such a hint from the man whose policy they so much admire—it seems true that the Emperor did really throw out the hint—to striking in with public opinion , and giving us , in a country which has so many democratic tendencies , a really democratic

      army . - One of the sophisms by which the conscription is made tolerable abroad is the assertion that it is a democratic institution . A frenchman , becoming a hero on compulsion , is ready to accept the apology without much scrutiny . But there never was a greater mistake . The conscript ion is a tax of blood practically raised only on the poorest members of _ the community . Save in rare exceptions , no man looks forward to the period

      of drawing without horror ; and no man goes for a soldier unless he fails in an attempt to beg or borrow , sufficient to buy himself off . The aristocratic and bourgeois classes , therefore , escape the heavier obligations of . thia law , which spreads misery and immorality amongst the poor . We will have nothing to do with it . There must be , there are , meana of raising an army quite effective enough for our purpose on very different principles . It is now superfluous to enumerate those ineansT Every one knows thenv ^ both those who recommend , because they have the

      honour and safety of the country at heart , and those who oppose , because they think only of class interests , and would prefer reigning alone in a degraded realm to sharing power with the real citizen of a free commonwealth . It is quite evident that the soldier ' s life may , both by increased pecuniary advantages and greater promise of honour and advancement , be made attractive to as many

      young men as we can find use for . The mere hope of good pay would , perhaps , not be sufficient , although a little increase might have a considerable effect . But you must put a Marshal ' s baton in the knapsack of every soldier . Unless you do that m these days of enlightenment , nothing will avail . At present , the common soldier is in the position of a man who stands for hours with his nose

      against the doors of a theatre to secure a good place , and when it is opened , finds all the front seats taken . Everybody has been before him there with his money . These ideas of reform , however , as we have hinted , are laughed at in France , where people , even in opposition , take their opiiuon

      often on such matters from authority . " Whence we derive our hopes—from free discussion—they imagine all our dangers to flow . We are under the curse of Parliamentary government—meaning not only our cramped forms , but all the means by which public opinion expresses itself . Look at tho article published tho other day in the Mom-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 24, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24021855/page/16/