Lord Macaulay, in his epitome of the arguments that were used in the year 1697, against the maintenance of a standing army in England, says, illustratively:—
“Some people, indeed, talked as if a militia could achieve nothing great. But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and modern history. What was the Lacedæmonian phalanx in the best days of Lacedæmon? What was the Roman Legion in the best days of Rome? What were the armies that conquered at Cressy, at Poictiers, at Agincourt, at Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury?[3] In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made war with success and glory. Were the English of the 17th century so degenerate that they could not be trusted to play the men for their own homesteads and parish churches?”
Gibbon, the historian, who at one part of his life was a captain in the Hampshire regiment of militia, remained ever after sensible of a benefit from it, which he testifies as follows:
“It made me an Englishman, and a soldier. In this powerful service I imbibed the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers, (the reader may smile,) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.”—Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 136.
White-Boys.
These ferocious rioters in the south of Ireland, early in the reign of George III., were known by the above name, because, as a mark among themselves in their attacks, they frequently wore a shirt over their clothes. Lord Chesterfield writes in 1765, to the Bishop of Waterford:—“I see that you are in fear again from your White-Boys, and have destroyed a good many of them; but I believe that if the military force had killed half as many landlords it would have contributed more effectually to restore quiet. The poor people in Ireland are used worse than negroes by their lords and masters, and their deputies of deputies of deputies.”
Naval Heroes.
The register of the church of Burnham Thorpe contains the entry of Lord Nelson’s birth; with a note by his father recording the investiture of Nelson with the order of the Bath, his rear-admiralship, and creation as Lord Nelson of the Nile, and of Burnham Thorpe. It is somewhat remarkable that three great contemporaneous admirals were all born in one small village of Norfolk—the village of Cockthorpe, which hardly contains more than six houses. The admirals are Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Sir Christopher Minors, and Sir James Narborough; it is also remarkable that this small village and the village of Burnham Thorpe should have produced four such great men.—Proc. Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society.