and after the peace, the force was reduced to under 20,000. Similar
changes took place in every war. The ruling class took advantage of the
position. 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.[16] 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 conscription. 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[17] 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