Half-pay was a gift decreed upon the 18th of January, 1697, and has subsequently involved many a doubt, whether as having been intended in the light of a retaining fee, or as a reward for past services. Opposite decisions have authorised different constructions, while the lapse of more than one hundred years has not yet explicitly brought the point to an issue.
The manly and independent spirit of our judges, pure as these laws that controul their opinions, has not been able to adjust the question.
In the case of General Ross, which was submitted to their enquiry and determination—they resolved that he could not be amenable, as a half-pay officer, to military jurisdiction; but the discussion extended no farther.
In 1715 a number of officers, however, who drew this recompence from the public, most ingloriously joined the Pretender. The issue being unfortunate for them, they were all taken prisoners, and afterwards tried and executed by martial law; although they might have been capitally convicted as rebels, by the common law of the land.
In having adduced these opposite examples, I cannot withhold a remark, that under no one head of the articles of war is this description of men noticed; and I can readily anticipate the answer of an Englishman, were I to ask him if any laws should affect such an object as I have defined, in which he is not expressly specified?
In this flourishing country, where industry and enterprize are open to all, it often happens that an officer, when the State no longer wants his services, turns his attention and the little capital he may possess, to commercial pursuits. In this new profession he very probably advances the public interests more essentially than were he recalled to his former duties, upon every fresh emergency.
That patriotism and loyalty, which I am convinced in those days influence every soldier, who, in the smallest portion, tastes of the bread of his King, will enforce through each quarter of Britain a local activity, and when necessary, a military zeal. As volunteer companies in the present, and very probably under the future political circumstances of our country, must form a branch of our force, who are there more capable of animating them than men who have been trained to arms, whose allegiance is undisputed, and whose early sentiments and ideas no change of life can extinguish? Some legislative assurances of exemption in favour of officers of this description, and who engage to discharge the obligations of general association when required, would be politic and gratifying. Half-pay might also very properly be no longer considered as a retainder of those who have served any marked number of years; for I would discriminate between the veteran and the stripling, who are alike entitled to the same remuneration; though, I should humbly conceive, to separate indulgencies. Having made this digression, suited, I trust, to the present topic and the present times, I return to the train of my narrative.