of the French squadron in the Channel, and the courier circulating the momentous news as he flew along, drew forth the local bands of militia and loyal volunteers, and created great alarm in London.

Without particularising the different measures which this apprehension called forth-as camps in Hyde Park, and fortifications of the coast, which are incidental to times of trouble-we may advert to the rage which the people themselves displayed for playing at soldiers. In 1757, an act was passed for raising a militia for the national protection, and although we are not disposed to weary the reader with statistics, it may serve to show on what scale this force was organised, if we give the number of privates which each county was required to furnish to it:

Making a force of 32,000 privates, who were to be employed in home service only, and to be amenable for the most part to the civil authority. By a later act of parliament, parties "drawn for the militia" were allowed to find substitutes, and regular agencies were formed for this purpose, the premium in 1795 being 7s. 6d. or 10s. 6d. each, and subsequently, by an act which passed in 1779, the militia force throughout the kingdom was. doubled.

Horace Walpole speaks of the review of the militia, in 1759, by the king in person, in Hyde Park, and, alluding to Lord Orford, their colonel, describes the uniform of their officers as "scarlet, faced with black, buff waistcoat, and gold buttons."

In addition to the militia were the corps of volunteers-the Loyal Westminster Volunteers, the Light Horse Volunteers, and local bodies

Carmarthenshire and town.....

200

1160 Carnarvonshire

80

280

120

360

80

240

160

120

in every district in the country-in which the most quiet professions and pacific trades armed themselves to a man. The attorney-general threw down his pen and took up the sword at the head of the Temple Volunteers, and Charles Kemble began to think of playing the warrior in earnest in the Westminster Volunteers. The king reviewed them in great form the fields were crowded with uniforms of grey, blue, red, or green, distinguishing the several troops-the streets bristled with muskets. and rifles on the respective "field-days" and, on Sundays, the volunteers marched to their parish church with their band of martial music at their head.

Many an honest tradesman owed his downfal to this warlike mania. First came an outlay for the uniform-an expensive uniform it was too, by the way; then there was a charge for the cleaning of the arms and accoutrements; then, decked out in full regimentals, our tradesman had to repair on stated days to exercise, and thus the shop was deserted, and business dwindled down till the ardent volunteer appeared in the Gazette, not, be it understood, in the list of Military Promotions, but in that of "B-pts." Cheerful times they were, nevertheless—the sun shining, the band playing, the colours flying, and ecstatic urchins shouting from very joy, while the valiant sons of Mercury, Thespis, Themis, and Saint Crispin-adopted for the nonce by Mars-went through their exercise. But, ye gods of war and victory, watch over and guide them, lest yon second Marlborough, who retails rushlights and red-herrings in Shoreditch, or that gaudy sergeant-born to rival Wolfe-who is a dealer in tripe and trotters, betray his calling, and talk about business and the shop! Direct their evolutions, or perchance the tailor, who never handled a heavier weapon than a needle, may ground his musket upon his comrade's toe, and prevent his "standing at ease;" or the cheesemonger next to him may singe the whiskers of his commanding officer with the charge he is cramming into the barrel of his gun! The duty and the danger are over, and now, off to the dinner of your corps, brave volunteers! You have distinguished yourselves, gentlemen, to-day, and might have distinguished yourselves much more, had an enemy dared to face you-your country thanks you. Talk of an enemy, indeed! Ha! ha! It was probably from respect to your prowess-possibly from other causes—that the French never honoured us with a visit, and that, at the conclusion of the war, your forces were disbanded without having had a skirmish with the foe, notwithstanding the many alarms of invasion which had drawn you shivering-with cold, and chattering-of glory, from your beds and

counters.

But the volunteers must not be laughed at; independent of the vanity which may have enlisted some into their ranks, there was, it must not be denied, a spirit of patriotism abroad, and an enthusiastic determination among all classes to defend their hearths and homes against the foe.

The same noble spirit was evinced in the subscriptions set on foot by the City of London, in 1759, for granting bounties to seamen and landsmen who would join the king's service, in addition to the offer of the freedom of the City to them, after a service of three years, or at the conclusion of the war, if it were brought to a close earlier; and in the subscription started by the Grand Jury of Suffolk for building a ship of the line, in 1782, which soon amounted to seventeen thousand five hundred pounds! It was the same noble spirit that actuated other cities and

boroughs to follow the example of London, and offer similar" bounties;" and, in 1798, it again showed itself in the shape of "free gifts" to the government for the protection of the country. On January the 30th, 1798, the king presented twenty thousand pounds out of his privy purse as a "free gift;" in September, the managers of several provincial theatres gave a benefit for the same fund on the first and last nights of the season; in the same month, a subscription opened by the Bank of England amounted to nearly two hundred thousand pounds: and the total amount thus voluntarily raised was a million and a half sterling by the 28th of September!

The bounties offered by government were, in 1782-for every able seaman, five pounds; ordinary seamen, fifty shillings each; and ablebodied landsmen, thirty shillings; which was increased in the same year by an additional bounty offered by the East India Company, of three guineas each to able seamen, two guineas to ordinary seamen, and a guinea and a half to landsmen, to the number of two thousand of each class. At the same court, this munificent company ordered three 74-gun ships to be built and presented to the king's service. The highest bounty ever known, amounted, in 1793, to thirteen pounds : namely, five pounds from government, two pounds from the city of London, two pounds from the Charter House, two pounds from the Trinity House, and two pounds from the Jockey Club.

But there were other less constitutional, but still necessary, ways resorted to for raising the forces and the supplies. Additional taxes were imposed upon every imaginable luxury, and additional duties upon articles of consumption not absolutely necessary.

66

In 1787, the duty on shops, or Shop tax," returned to the revenue no smaller a sum than one hundred and eight thousand pounds, of which Scotland paid eight hundred; London and Westminster, forty-two thousand; Bath and Bristol, one thousand; and the other cities, towns, &c., of England, fifty-seven thousand.

In 1798, the following list of Assessed Taxes is given on the face of the Collector's receipt:

The abuses which had crept into the regular army by this time would scarcely be credited were they not recorded by an authority so trustworthy as Sir Walter Scott, who thus describes them in an article occasioned by the death of the Duke of York, in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of January the 10th, 1827:

"No science was required on the part of the candidate for a commission in the army: no term of service as a cadet, no previous experience whatever the promotion went on equally unimpeded; the boy let loose from school last week might, in the course of a month, be a field-officer, if his friends were disposed to be liberal of money and influence. Others there were against whom there could be no complaint for want of length of service, although it might be difficult to see how their experience was improved by it. It was no uncommon thing for a commission to be obtained for a child in the cradle; and, when he came from college, the fortunate youth was at least a lieutenant of some standing by dint of fair promotion. To sum up this catalogue of abuses, commissions were in some instances bestowed upon young ladies, when pensions could not be had. We knew ourselves one fair dame who drew the pay of captain in the Dragoons, and was, probably, not much less fit for the service than some who, at that period, actually did duty; for, as we have said, no knowledge of any kind was demanded from the young officers: if they desired to improve themselves in the elemental parts of their profession, there were no means open, either of direction or instruction. But, as a zeal for knowledge rarely exists where its attainment brings no credit or advantage, the gay young men who adopted the military profes sion were easily led into the fashion of thinking that it was pedantry to be master even of the routine of the exercise which they were obliged to perform. An intelligent sergeant whispered from time to time the word of command, which his captain would have been ashamed to have known without prompting, and thus the duty of the field-day was huddled over rather than performed."

We also have living portraits embalmed in the works of Smollett and Fielding, which show the state, not only of the army, but also of the navy and the church-witness their Weazels and Bowlings, their Trullibers and Shuffles.

The severity exercised in the army at this time was excessive, although certainly justified to some extent by the necessity of preserving discipline during the wars; but what could the poor private expect from such officers as Scott has described, full of caprice and arrogance enhanced by suddenly finding themselves in a position to command, and void of experience or knowledge of their duties? We find, in 1784, a Captain Kenneth Mackenzie, commander of a fort in Africa, so zealous on this point, that on a prisoner, one Kenneth Murray Mackenzie, a deserter, effecting his escape, he ordered the sentry who was on duty at the time to receive fifteen hundred lashes, and, on the runaway being found, he was, by the orders of his captain, tied to a cannon and blown to pieces. It is but justice to add, that the captain was, on December the 10th, 1784, tried at the Old Bailey, and convicted of the murder.

To secure hands for the army and navy, bodies of men were organised in addition to the ordinary recruiting service, namely, "kidnappers" for the army, and " press-gangs" to obtain recruits for the navy. July-VOL. CIV. NO. CCCCXV.

The kidnappers were not kept so much for the regular army-it was the East India Company's agents who had regular depôts in town ready to receive the victims. That this service was not very lawfully performed, we may judge by the complaints made of the practices resorted to in these crimping-houses. Thus, a man was found dead in Chancery-lane, when it was discovered that he had met his death in attempting to escape through the skylight of an East Indian depôt for recruits; at another time mysterious funerals at night were noticed in Saint Bride's churchyard, in Fleet-street, and, no entries being made in the register, it was found upon inquiry that the bodies were brought from another depôt in the neighbourhood, where numbers of recruits who had been kidnapped were imprisoned, previous to a secret shipment to India. Even De Foe, on a journey into the West of England, only escaped by stratagem from an attempt made to kidnap him.

But we will give a specimen of the proceedings of the kidnappers from the British Gazette and Sunday Monitor of August the 4th, 1782:

"Wednesday evening one of the most horrid scenes was discovered near Leicester-fields that ever disgraced any civilised country. A young lad was perceived running from thence towards the Haymarket, and two or three fellows running after him, crying, "Stop thief!" Some of the passengers no sooner stopped him as such, than he told them he was no thief, but had been kidnapped by his pursuers, who had chained him in a cellar with about nine more, in order to be shipped off for India; and that he had made his escape so far by mere desperation, swearing he would run the first through with a penknife he held open in his hand. The youth was instantly liberated, and the whole fury of the populace fell on his kidnapping pursuers, one of whom was heartily ducked in the Mews pond. All the remaining youths were taken from the place of confinement, by the intervention of the populace. Those robbers of human flesh, it seems, not only intoxicate country lads till they can confine them, but have been known to stop people in the streets, and carry them to their horrid dens under the various pretences of [their] being deserters, pickpockets, &c. They likewise attend register offices, and hire raw youths there for servants, whom they immediately confine, and sell them either to the military or to the India kidnapping contractors. The master of this infamous house behaved in a most insolent manner before Justice Hyde, and was committed to the watchhouse black-hole till this day at eleven o'clock, when he is to be re-examined."

We learn two facts from this extract. In the first place, it is gratifying to observe that the system of kidnapping was not openly recognised, but seems to have been treated as unlawful: and, by another passage we find that it was not only for the East Indian military service that it was resorted to, but that the wretched victims were sometimes sold into a kind of slavery. The practice still continued also of kidnapping and selling country youths to the captains of trading vessels to America, who again disposed of them for a series of years to planters in Pennsylvania and the other North American colonies, where their condition of bondage has been feelingly told in the well-known "Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman.”

A very similar occurrence to that quoted happened in the same neigh