A parallel could be found to all these examples at this day, it may be said. It is quite possible, for such ill weeds once sown are not easily eradicated, but the roots of the evil lay far deeper then than now in the overpowering supremacy of the Secretary-at-War. That official throughout this period continued to correspond directly with every grade of officer from the colonel to the corporal, whether to give orders, commendation, or rebuke, wholly ignoring the existence of superior officers as channels of communication and discipline.[54] His powers in other directions are indicated by the phrase, "Secretary-at-War's leave of absence,"[55] which was granted to subalterns, without the slightest reference to their colonels, to enable them to vote for the Government's candidate at by-elections.[56] We find him filling up a vacancy in a regiment without a word to the colonel,[57] instructing individual colonels of dragoons when they shall turn their horses out to grass,[58] and actually giving the parole to the guard during the King's absence from St. James's.[59] All these orders, relating to purely military matters, were issued, of course, by the King's authority, though not always in the King's name; and, indeed, as the volume of work increased, directions, criticisms, and reproofs tended more and more to be communicated by a clerk by order of the Secretary-at-War. In fact, the absolute control of the Army was usurped by a civilian official who, while arrogating the exercise of the royal authority, abjured every tittle of constitutional responsibility.
The result of such a system in such an age as that of Walpole may be easily imagined. All sense of military subordination among officers was lost. Their road to advancement lay, not by faithful performance of their duty for the improvement of their men and the satisfaction of their superiors, but by gaining, in what fashion soever, the goodwill of the Secretary-at-War,[60]—by granting this man his discharge, advancing that to the rank of corporal, pardoning a third the crime of desertion. "Our generals," said the Duke of Argyll in the House of Lords at the opening of the Spanish War, "are only colonels with a higher title, without power and without command ... restrained by an arbitrary minister.... Our armies here know no other power but that of the Secretary-at-War, who directs all their motions and fills up all vacancies without opposition and without appeal."[61] Well might General Wade be believed when he asserted that the discipline of the Army was as bad as it could be.
[CHAPTER II]
1714-1739.
From the political I turn to the purely military side of the Army's history. Treating first of the officers, it has, I think, been sufficiently shown that there were influences enough at work to demoralise them quite apart from any legacies of corruption that they might have inherited from the past. Against their indiscipline and dishonesty George the First seems to have set his face from the very beginning. He had a particular dislike to the system of purchasing and selling commissions. If (so ran his argument) an officer is unfit to serve from his own fault, he ought to be tried and cashiered, if he is rendered incapable by military service, he ought to retire on half-pay; and so firm was the King on this latter point that the Secretary-at-War dared not disobey him.[62] As early, therefore, as in June 1715 the King announced his intention of putting a stop to the practice, and as a first step forbade all sale of commissions except by officers who had purchased, and then only for the price that had originally been paid. One principal cause that prompted him to this decision appears to have been the exorbitant price demanded by colonels, on the plea that they had discharged regimental debts due for the clothing of the men, and suffered loss through the carelessness of agents.[63] It should seem, however, that as the rule applied only to regiments on the British and not to those on the Irish Establishment, the desired reforms were little promoted by this expedient. In 1717, therefore, the King referred the question to the Board of General Officers, with, however, a reservation in favour of sale for the benefit of wounded or superannuated officers, which could not but vitiate the entire scheme. He thought it better, therefore, to regulate that which he could not abolish, and in 1720 issued the first of those tariffs for the prices of commissions which continued to appear in the Queen's Regulations until 1870. At the same time he subjected purchase to certain conditions as to rank and length of service, adding somewhat later that the fact of purchase should carry with it no right to future sale.[64] Evidently ministers kept before his eyes not only the usefulness of the system from a political standpoint, since every officer was bound over in the price of his commission to good behaviour, but still more the impossibility of obtaining from Parliament a vote for ineffective men. They followed, in fact, the precept of Marlborough, and it is hard to say that they were not right.
Concurrently the King took steps, not always with great effect, to check the still existing abuse of false masters.[65] A more real service was the prevention of illegal deductions from the pay of the men, a vice from which hardly a regiment was wholly free, by the regulation of all stoppages by warrant.[66] As part of the same principle, he endeavoured also to ensure honesty towards the country and towards the soldiery in the matter of clothing. In fact, wherever the hand of King George the First can be traced in the administration of the Army, it is found working for integrity, economy, and discipline; and it is sufficiently evident that when he gave decided orders the very officials at the War Office knew better than to disregard them.
It is melancholy to record the fact that he was ill supported by the General Officers of the Army. The Board of Generals, to which the settlement of all purely military questions was supposed to be referred, seems to have been lazy and inert, requiring occasionally to be reminded of its duty in severe terms.[67] It may well be that this supineness was due to the general arrogation of military authority by civilians, but even so it remains unexcused. Colonels again appear to have been scandalously negligent and remiss in every respect; and it may have been as a warning to them that the King on one occasion dismissed seven of their number in one batch from his service.[68] But issue orders as he might, the King could never succeed, owing to the prevailing indiscipline, in making a certain number of officers ever go near their regiments at all. This habit of long and continued absence from duty, especially on colonial stations, is said to have troubled him much, and to have caused him greater uneasiness than any other abuse in the Army. It will be seen when we read of the opening of the Seven Years' War that he had all too good ground for misgiving. Yet the regimental officers must not be too hardly judged. In foreign garrisons, as shall presently be shown, they were exiles, neglected and uncared for; at home they were subject to incessant provocation, to malicious complaints, and in every quarter and at all times to the control of civilians. Lastly, though frequently called out in aid of the civil power, they had the fate of Captain Porteous before their eyes, and indeed took that lesson so speedily to heart that for want of their interposition the life of that unlucky man was sacrificed.[69]