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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ