Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

discontented citizen-all have in their several grades, and as one deadly emergency arose after another, not only exemplified, but strengthened and enlarged, the warlike fame of their ancestors.

Indifference or selfishness would now say, Let us be content; the heart of the army is sound. It has been proved by the hottest of fiery ordeals that our soldiers will do their duty; the nation is safe, and we ourselves are safe. But the history of the past has already emphatically proclaimed that there is no safety where there is national injustice. The injustice may fall externally, as on a conquered dependency-or internally on a race or a class. That our men will ever stand true in the hour of danger-that they will ever dutifully endure the fatigues and miseries which are inevitable to the lot of war, and are adopted by them in the adoption of their lot-we cannot doubt. But if it become known that the soldier, besides the inevitable hardships and dangers of his calling, is subjected to unnecessary cold and damp, is dressed in uneasy and insufficient clothing, is fed on food sordid and unwholesome, and is surrounded by impurities which offend his senses and poison the air he breathes; and that he is subjected to all these elements of unhappiness and unhealthiness, not because they are the necessary hardships of war, but because their removal would cost money and trouble, which it is desirable to save;-the soldier can scarcely be expected to exhibit the spirit of patriotism towards a country which so forgets him.

It will at once be perceived that we are going to found our views on statements and charges which have lately been very prominently before the world; and we shall therefore set out with the precautionary remark, that we believe the soldier of the present day to be in a better condition than the soldier of the last century. The question is, whether his condition is as good as it can be made-a question founded on the principle, that whatever ameliorations can really be communicated to it, should not be evaded because they are troublesome or expensive. This is an age

of putting to rights, and while other sections of the community are undergoing rectification, the military force of the country is surely too important to be passed over. At such a juncture, it may even, while improving, fall behind and become virtually deteriorated if its rate of improvement be slower than that of other bodies. It is frequently remarked that the social evils of the day seem so awful to us, not because they are worse than those which our grandfathers could have seen-they are in reality not so bad-but because a searching inquisitive age has for the first time exposed them to sight. But if this be an accurate view, it must open up to us the perception of new duties and responsibilities, since we now know of evils which our ancestors did not see. Blind enough, it is true, they must have been, if they did not know the cruel devastation to which their poor soldiers not only were liable, but which they systematically underwent. How they died off, and how their value in life and their loss by death were estimated, could not, we think, be better told than in the following calculation by a man of literary and political eminence during the latter portion of the eighteenth century. It will be seen that, for reasons which are in all respects distinct enough, he would like to see negro troops, purchased from the slave-dealers, serving in the West Indies instead of white men.

"Of an English regiment in actual service of war in the West Indies, fourfifths die every year of disease; and, therefore, to that extent it must be continually recruited. On this calculation, a body of 1000 men, to be kept up for five years, will require 4000 recruits. The freight of 5000 men, with their stores, officers excluded, amounts to L.100,000; levy money, at L.5, to L.25,000; clothing, at L.3 for 1000 men for five years, and 4000 men for one year, to L 27,000,-besides many other expenses which attend English troops, that would not be required for black troops; freight of 1000 English troops home at the end of the war, L.20,000: inde, in all L.172,000. Add to this the loss of the industry of 1000 British subjects yearly for five years, valued at L.20, L.100,000; and the loss of the industry for every 4000 British subjects who died, valued at seven years' purchase, which is a low enough calcula

tion for men in the prime of life, such as recruits to regiments commonly are, L.560,000 inde, L.660,000;-the whole together making L.832,000. But the purchase of 1000 negroes in Jamaica, at L.40 each, with 100 every year to keep up the number, which is a very large allowance, would be L.60,000; clothing, at 40s. a-year, L.11,000: inde, in all L.71,000. The balance in saving would be L.761,000." *

Thus, to keep a garrison of a thousand men for five years, you must calculate on the cost of sending out five thousand men, and on the cost of bringing back one thousand, with the several collateral items of cost which the inconvenient discrepancy between the exports and the imports occasions. We could even suggest an element of cost which the astute calculator has omitted-the supporting of the widows and orphans thrown upon the parish by the premature death of four thousand out of five thousand men in five years. Then observe the sound rule of economy on which the whole is based. It is the rule, well known to all the comfortable classes, that it is cheaper in the long run to buy a good article though it be dear. British recruits may be had at the small charge of £5 per head, while each negro costs no less than £40. But then the latter commodity wears so well, that you can supply the losses by one hundred instead of one thousand in the year. The sacrifice of black men is, in short, only ten per cent of the sacrifice of white men; and when other expenses, arising out of the continual dying and exporting of fresh human cargoes, are considered, the result in figures shows a very clear profit. It is not easy to look with equanimity on such statements, remembering that they were matter of practical consideration among statesmen. How, after all, the active iniquity of slavery seems to dwindle before the passive iniquity of letting our countrymen die uncared for! While such things went on, proposals for the abolition of the slave trade might well be sneered down as fanciful crotchets.

There are two ways of setting down ten thousand fighting men on a given

spot at a given time. The one method is, by despatching that number, with perhaps a small additional percentage to balance the disabled, and bringing them to their post hale, sanguine, unharassed, through the most careful and costly organisation for their transit and sustenance. The other method is, by despatching some fifty thousand men, in the expectation that, though the remainder be left dead or dying on the road, a fifth part will reach the point of destination in serviceable condition. Of the army of half a million with which Napoleon crossed the Niemen to his Russian campaign, only twenty thou sand recrossed it in returning; and if the extermination in this case may be laid to causes of a wondrous and peculiar character, yet the waste of life showed itself while operations were still so far within the bounds of calculation, that they would not have been undertaken by one who cared as much for the lives of his men as for the gratification of his own ambition, since more than two-thirds of his army had dropped away before he first faced the Russians at Smolensko. This was an instance of wastefulness of life fortunately rare in European warfare; but it is the prevailing feature in Oriental warfare, and has been exemplified to a frightful extent in every Russian campaign. No doubt, when we are acquainted with the Russian statistics of the late war, we shall find the efforts to bring troops to the defence of Sebastopol prove no exception. No British general has ever dared to waste his men after this fashion. The economy of life, so far as it was liable to be destroyed by actual military operations, was carried to a chivalrous perfection by the Duke of Wellington, whose conscientious and humane principles have been followed by his successors, and have been signally exemplified by Sir Colin Campbell. And yet in our Crimean army, during the first winter, the rate of mortality, separate from the casualties of war-the deaths, in short, from those common causes of mortality which afflict us when dwelling at home in peace-were at the rate of between

Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs, App. No. 2.

sixty and seventy per cent per annum: that is to say, any community, living as our soldiers then lived, would lose between sixty and seventy out of every hundred of its numbers in a year. Further, when we compare the soldier at home with the ordinary citizen, we find that the deaths per thousand among civilians in the parish of St Pancras are two and a fifth; among the Life Guards in the Regent's Park there, they are ten and two-fifths-five to one exactly. The deaths of civilians in the parish of Kensington are 3.3; those of the Royal Horse Guards, Knightsbridge, 17.5. Taking all classes of the community between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, the rate of mortality among our soldiers at home, taken on a low average, is seventeen in the thousand; while that of civilians, or the rest of the population, is eight and four-fifths-not quite a half of the soldiers' mortality. These, with a crowd of like statistics, all tending so clearly in the same direction that we shall not inflict them on the reader, who probably has already gone over them, show us that, let the military commander do what he can to be careful of the lives of his men in all those operations which are purely military or combative, there are other things, not perhaps strictly of a military character, for the safety of the soldier's life, and in the safety of his life for his preservation from the misery and torture of disease and a death of hardship, which the nation has not yet provided

for him.

The heroic bargain which the soldier makes with his country is, to die, if his death will further his country's cause. If the cause can be duly furthered in any other manner and the life can be saved, then it is the country's duty to save it without counting the cost. The soldier may dutifully endure the coming of death brought to him by disease or hardship when he believes it to be inevitable. But that death which has no terrors for him, because his soul pants for it as the crown of soldier martyrdom, and his nerves are exultingly strung to receive it, is the death in battle, which emphatically proclaims that the life is lost to the gain

of the cause, and has not been casually and carelessly dropped by the way.

"To pass, when life her light withdraws,
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor in a merely selfish cause-

In some good cause-not in mine own,
To perish, wept for, honour'd, known,
And like a warrior overthrown:

Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears,
When soil'd with noble dust he hears

His country's war-song thrill his ears,
Then dying of a mortal stroke,
What time the foeman's line is broke,
And all the war is rolled in smoke."

It is but justice to the soldier, that if he is to die, it should, if possible, be thus. Since military glory-the glory of military service in a good cause is the reward he seeks, let him at least have it in his death. True, though he find himself sinking under the length of an ill-calculated march, or freezing to death because a commissary has neglected his duty, or wasting away under the unwholesome food provided by a knavish contractor, a sense of duty may support him to the end-but should he be left no other support? He goes to his rest, indeed, to suffer no more, and is forgotten with the many thousands of others, as time rolls over their obscure graves; but the debt of injustice is inherited by the survivors, who in their sorrow should have, when it can be justly given, the proud consolation that the husband or the father died like a true soldier, with his back to the field and his

face to the foe. Other forms of death in service require explanations about accompanying conditions-they may be heroic or they may not-but death on the field of battle at once tells its own history to all hearts.

The art of preserving their own health has probably been more or less considered by men since they first began to consider anything, although it must be confessed that they have often made a very bad job of it. The inquiries of some very clever and enthusiastic men have lately developed a sphere of usefulness connected with this end, which, for want of a better name, they have called sanitary science. Some of its teachers have doubtless promulgated whims and

fallacies, but they have, on the whole, proved, by irresistible facts, that there are operations and adjustments of things which can be counted on for saving lives which would otherwise be lost. The peculiar feature of these new suggestions, when compared with all previous injunctions for the preservation of health, may be described thus: Formerly, in all books or other writings upon health and disease, each individual human being was appealed to on the best means of retaining his own health and avoiding disease. The tendency of the exertions of the sanitarians has been to take up the matter at the point where the individual man can do no more to help himself, since he is surrounded by deteriorating conditions over which he has no control. The poor workman who finds that his bread is only to be made in a densely populous quarter of a large town, where there are no drains and no receptacles for impurity- the sailor sleeping in the hold of a ship impregnated with poisonous gases-the collier working in an unventilated coalmine, and many others, were incapable, by personal exertion, of bettering their own condition, and required the intervention of general arrangements. However obvious the necessity of considering the position of such persons may seem, yet the world is full of lamentable instances of the neglect which they have met with, and the history of the whole affair illustrates an often-repeated view, that general expressions of opinion, however sound, receive very little attention, until earnest and enthusiastic men work them out to practical conclusions, and prove, to the amazement of well-meaning but inactive men, how woefully they have been neglecting their own favourite precepts. Such has been the result of the progress of sanitary labourers. They have not opened a new object of human inquiry and thought, because people were taught to keep their feet dry, eat wholesome food, avoid dissipation, and wash and shave themselves, before Mr Chadwick was born. They have not discovered any new operation of nature, such as the doctrine of chemical equivalents, or the affinities of electricity and mag

netism, for people admitted long ago that the gases from decomposing animal and vegetable matter are noxious to life, and that wholesome food is as necessary to health in the railway store or the mess-table as in the private dining-room. But they have so fully illustrated the bearings of general truths on the duties of those who have the condition and treatment of their fellow-beings in their hands, that what was before a disembodied sentiment or opinion, is now reduced to distinct practical precept, illustrated by a crowd of examples. It has been the fate of our army to be among the latest portions of the community to reap the harvest of this valuable knowledge. For instance, when we look at the rules for the dietary of our prisoners, we find the following among them: "A change of food being beneficial to health, it is directed that the dinner, on at least two days in the week, shall be different from the dinner on the other days." And as a commentary on this humane regulation for our thieves and forgers, the Commission of Inquiry on the Sanitary Condition of the Army tells us, that one of the marked peculiarities of the British soldier is, that he is a man who dines every day for twenty consecutive years on boiled beef, unless, of course, when the vicissitudes of a campaign relieve the monotony. Then, again, the Surveyor-General of Convict Prisons was examined on ventilation and means of internal purification. Looking on himself as responsible for the health of his convicts, he described the scientific perfection of all the internal arrangements of his pet prison, Pentonville, of Millbank,-not so perfect a specimen, since it had been built in the days of darkness touching sanitary science, and was not without difficulty brought within its sphere, of Dartmoor, and of Portland. The chairman of the Commission, almost losing patience at the description of the pedantic perfection of the arrangements for criminals, just after he had been sickened with accounts of the filth and unwholesomeness of barracks, said to the Surveyor-General, whom he knew to be a military man

-"What is your reason; take Port

land; you have to look after those men, and keep them in health, to execute certain public works for the Government; other engineers build barracks to keep soldiers in perfect health to do service for the Government; how is it that in the one case a man sleeps in a fetid atmosphere, and in the other you give him a pure one?" The answer was simple, but sufficiently emphatic: "I do not think that the subject has been sufficiently considered in respect of the barracks; it has been lost sight of." Those edile arrangements for the preservation of life and health, which are deemed so essential that they must be provided even for the residence of the criminal, are "lost sight of" in the residence of the soldier!

The reason why the food and ventilation for the criminal must be looked to so carefully by others is, because he cannot get out to choose for himself. But in truth, though from causes as honourable as those which place the thief in custody are disgraceful, the soldier is scarcely more helpless and more dependent on other people for the sanitary conditions of the food he eats, the clothing he wears, and the house he lives in. Whether it is to be deemed a wholesome feature or not, one of the tendencies of our very active age is to aggregate human beings together in large masses, where they require to sink individual action in general organisation, and are more or less at the mercy of those who have the working out of the organisation. It is enough to refer to the large manufactories and mines, the public works often rapidly carried out in remote places, which become instantaneously peopled by thousands of persons-to our great systems of locomotion by railway and steamboat. It is only where the law is both very strong and very ductile, that civil liberty and individual rights can be preserved in these great ganglions of human beings. In the feudal ages, all would have been subject as serfs to the authority of some despotic lord, like the workers in the old German and Italian mines; and, to speak fairly of feudality, it is not easy to see how order could have been preserved among large bodies of human beings, during the earlier centuries of

European history, through any other arrangement but that of lord and serf. But even in our own days there is a constant tendency in those who, in a proprietary or official shape, are at the head of such aggregate collections of human beings, to abuse their power, and exhibit, in however small a shape, the attributes of the despot. Hence all who come in contact with these new forms of power, have had to use much vigilance and pertinacity for their own protection, and sometimes have found it a duty to hold out the protecting hand to those too weak to protect themselves. So, it has been found necessary to protect children working in manufactories, and women and children working in mines. And there is still, if we mistake not, a conflict going on between a combination of great manufacturing capitalists and the inspectors of factories; the former assuming the humble title of "The Millowners' Protection Society," and complaining that they are cruelly and despotically entreated, and are denied the rights of British subjects, because it is required of them at some expense-amounting, it is said, sometimes to £30 or £40 for a large millto fence machinery which occasionally, in its unprotected state, wheels some poor fellow round and dashes out his brains, or, catching a pucker in a careless girl's sleeve, sucks in her arm, and tears it from the socket. Passing from such instances to a matter in which we are all concerned-there are every day some hundreds of thousands of people within the British Isles at the mercy of railway companies for personal comfort, for punctuality in travelling, and for their safety from mutilation or death. We all know how tough a contest is continually kept up by the public for common justice in such matters against these lords of the road, although the greatest people in the land are on the same side of the question with the poorest. It is a law of nature that bodies of people who are put at the mercy of others for the supply of anything important to their wellbeing, will be oppressed or pillaged by those who serve them, unless they can protect themselves, or are protected by others.

« ПредишнаНапред »