Philanthropists and philosophers have come to the comfortable conclusion that there are in England too many Englishmen. John Bull has played the Sultan, and has an alarmingly numerous family. Unhappily, however, he has not the Sultan’s wealth—neither has he the Sultan’s prerogative: he cannot feed all his sons and daughters; he must not choke or drown them. The bow-string and the Bosphorus are not for John. What then is to become of the family of Bull? Shall they tear each other piecemeal? Forgetful of their origin, shall they destroy one another in civil fight? Amor patriæ—humanity—all the finer and nobler feelings of the human heart revolt at the very thought. “What,” the philanthropist will inquire with tears in his eyes—“what, then, is to be done with a superabundant population?” My reply is as brief as, I flatter myself, it is conclusive—they must swindle. We have been gradually adopting what I believe to be the only remedy for the national disease; we have for some years in many instances applied what I conceive to be the only cure for the social malady; but it is only when it shall be applied upon a grand scale, when, in fact, a curative science shall be professed and practised by men cognisant of all its subtle and most bountiful capabilities—for it is yet in its infancy—that the greatness of its social value will be thoroughly manifested and acknowledged.
It is allowed that all the professions are full to running over. The Church is crammed to suffocation with applicants for deaneries, prebends, vicarages; to say nothing of the thousands with their hearts fixed upon mitres. There is hardly standing room among the candidates for lawn and silk aprons.
In the Courts of Law there are wigs as thick as cauliflowers in Battersea Gardens. Besides, the sneaking spirit of the times has so enervated the British character, that Englishmen lack somewhat of that generous pugnacity which, in the days of our fathers, would precipitate them into the arena of the law to feed with their own flesh the lions therein prowling. And when it happens that a gentleman with the true English blood in him shall resolve upon such noble sacrifice, why, so numerous are the animals awaiting him, that many a term shall pass, and not one of the carnivora shall have so much as a mouthful of the honest gentleman’s flesh—shall not even make their mark in him. Consider it well, reader; count, if you can, the hundreds of excellent, watchful, well-disposed persons who, every morning during term, come down to the Courts to prey; and who, nevertheless, return to their homes all innocent of strife. Is not this a discouraging prospect for thousands of young men, most of them very willing to become Chancellor? But so it is; the profession has a greater supply than demand. In fifty years it will be thought great luck in a man to die Lord Chief Justice or Attorney-General.
In the Army, a profession that I have followed with an ardour peculiarly my own, can anything be more barren? Here am I, at the age of nine-and-thirty—I, who have—but no, the dignity of my subject, the national importance of this treatise, shall not be lessened or neglected by aught personal. Hence, I disdain to speak of a deep bayonet wound inflicted in the most dastardly manner in the small of my back, during my first campaign in Biscay—of a gash across my nose, from an enemy’s sickle, when bivouacking in a hen-roost—of an imaginary fracture of the os—but no; I have said it, I will not mingle my private griefs, were I chicken-hearted enough to think them so, with matters of national interest. Besides, every man’s country is proverbially ungrateful to him. Hence, I should despise myself did I more than allude, in the most evanescent way, to my heavy pecuniary losses in the service of Mexico, Chili, Peru, and other places too numerous to mention. But so it is; and what, I ask—what cares the commander-in-chief, sitting in his pride of place at the Horse Guards—what cares he for my superb plum-pudding spotted charger, shot whilst grazing—it was only the day before I had been on him—by an enemy’s vidette? What cares he for the loss of my three saddles, generously given up to be converted into highlows for my barefooted comrades? Yes, what—I must, I will ask it—cares the said commander-in-chief for the subsequent ignominy endured in consequence of that gallant steed—that by me devoted leather? Would it affect him, even for half-an-hour, to know that on my return to England—my beloved land!—after three years’ absence, I was, at half-past six on a December morning, summoned by my landlady to see a Mr Jones, the said Mr Jones and a friend at the same time entering my apartment to remind me of my lost barb, my long-forgotten saddles? On that morning the commander-in-chief was, I doubt it not, snoring ingloriously in bed; little dreaming—it may be, little caring—that at that hour a brother soldier, placed between two big men in a small gig, was being conveyed at the rate of three miles an hour through fog and frost to Chancery Lane. I remember the Tyburn-like pace; for, let me do his benevolence justice, Mr Levi in the handsomest way apologised for not having had the horse roughed; adding that, as he had no other call to make that morning, “he was not in no ’urry.”
Friendly reader, as an officer and a gentleman, I protest to you that I would not have even thus casually alluded to personal adventures did they not in the most striking, and I may add in the most pathetic manner illustrate the condition of a man who, with a military flame burning in his breast, generously offers his fire in the cause of nations. I might proceed; but the same modesty that has hitherto confined me to the rank of captain—and I may here allude to an infamous conspiracy on the part of the publisher and printers of the Army List, my name, as I have been informed, having been maliciously omitted from that miscellany—the same modesty ties up my tongue on my own sufferings, my own deserts; or at most but lets it move in fitful murmurings. I have done! To proceed.
In the Army what are the hopes for superabundant young gentlemen, too spirited to starve, and too nice to dig? What, I ask, can be their hopes when a hypocritic sentimentality is gaining ground amongst those who are pleased to call themselves thinking men—a whining, sneaking abuse of glory and all its mighty purposes? There is a whimpering, white-faced cowardice that would extract all the stern immortal beauty from the battlefield, showing it to be no other than a place of butchery; that would display the valiant soldier with his throat cut, his bowels gloriously protruding, as a horrible sight—a piece of sacrilege done by man upon his fellow. And more than this, the same cant lifts up its face of turnip pallor, and pointing to where ten or twelve thousand stalwart fellows lie magnificently dead in blood and mire, has the effrontery to ask cui bono, as my old schoolmaster used to say—to put the impudent “What’s the good of it?” I should abuse the ingenuousness of the young martial spirit were I to be silent on the innovation of this wicked principle; a principle which, with the infamous invention of the steam gun and the unhallowed introduction of the rocket brigade, will go far, or Captain Whitefeather is no prophet, to utterly destroy what I was once proud to think the instinct for war in the “paragon of animals.” There is something inconceivably cowardly in the steam gun. Possessed of such engines, neither party will fight; and thus, nations always prepared for war, will hold continual peace. They will, so to speak, treat and deliberate at “full cock”; and being always ready, will never fire. Is not this, I ask, a lamentable state of the world for a man to be born in? Let us, however, unflinchingly look truth in the face; by so doing we shall be the better prepared for the evil days at hand, which to enable men to meet with some serenity of mind is the high purpose of this essay. Such days are nearer, much nearer, than those who have capital in powder mills like to dream of. We shall, of course, continue to keep a small standing army; but blank cartridges for birthdays will be the only order from the Horse Guards: bullets will become as rare as brilliants; whole tons of the death-dealing lead being sold to the type-founders. Laurel, “the meed of mighty conquerors”—why a whole grove of it will in the coming time be held of no more account, nay, of not so much, as a handful of dried marjoram. Have I dreamt it, or did I at a late philosophical meeting see a grave, pragmatic man rise from his seat, and when up, did I or did I not hear him seriously put it as a motion—that the planet Mars should be no longer called Mars, but be known to all future generations as James Watt?
The Army, then, affords no refuge for the tens of thousands up to within these few years begotten, christened, suckled, nursed, fondled, schooled, petted, sported with, wept over by fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers, for the glorious purposes of war. In such case is it not, I ask, the highest purpose of the philanthropist to find employment for men, who in happier times might have been usefully employed in burning the cottages of our enemies, lessening the numbers of our enemies’ children (thus nipping a foe in the bud) on lances and bayonets, tearing up olive groves, carrying away the vanity of plate and pictures from enemies’ churches, and in fire, and blood, and terror, planting the immortal bay? Since the British Lion is no longer to be fed upon Frenchmen’s flesh, since he is henceforth to have a regimen of bread and milk and dates, it behoves us to see that he be gradually and duly prepared for the change in his diet, lest consumption fall upon him; or, a still greater point, lest he break all bonds and spread dismay around.
I have now, I trust, convincingly proved that the many asylums hitherto open to the pious, the wise, and the brave, are most inconveniently crammed; and that with less room for an increasing generation, the crowds will consequently become more dense, more clamorous, and in a word, more revolutionary. What is the remedy in this great natural crisis?
In one word make I answer—“Swindling!”
The philosophy of the present time is remarkable for its contempt—nay, for its wholesome abhorrence of poverty. A want of the luxuries of life is not merely inconvenient, it is positively ignominious. Hence what wrigglings, and smugglings, and heartburnings are every day acted and endured, to stand well with the world; that is, to stand without a hole in our hat or a damning rent in our small clothes! The modern man is wonderfully spiritualised by this philosophy; so much so that if he can secure to himself a display of the collar he is almost wholly unconscious of the absence of the shirt. Indeed so deep and so widely spread is this sentiment that the present time might be denominated the Age of Collars.