About the spacious world let others roam,
The voyage life, is longest made at home.
☞
FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.
THE VILLAGE TEACHER.
Twice in every year our otherwise quiet village is thrown into a ferment, which agitates its little community like an earthquake, and unsettles all the habits of order and industry for which we are usually remarkable. The cause of this great tumult is the militia training—that system which supposes every citizen to be a soldier, and undertakes to instruct him in the art and mystery of holding a musket and putting the right foot foremost. On the last of these occasions, I was surprised to find that my whole school had played truant; and observing an unusual ferment in the streets, found, upon inquiry, that at the last election for officer, Ezekiel Snip, the village tailor, a man with fierce red whiskers and a peculiar altitude of chin, had been elected captain. Ezekiel had dipt into Duane's Hand-Book, and was esteemed profoundly skilled in the manual exercise; so that the neighbours were all on the tiptoe of expectation to witness the parade of the day. As this took place opposite to my school-room, I seated myself quietly at the window to watch how matters proceeded. About eight o'clock, the tavern porch began to be filled with people, some bringing old rusty rifles, others their fowling pieces, and some armed with a stout oaken stick. Then sallied forth a valiant drummer, aided by a no less valiant fifer, at the head of some dozens of the town boys, to alarm the village. They marched up the street, and down the street, and beat tantarara, and whistled out of all tune,—till my head ached,—to the infinite delight of the idle urchins at their heels, and the gaping housemaids at the doors and windows, as they passed. When this preparatory ceremony was gone through, forth issued captain Snip from the tavern door, in all the glory of a blue coat, epaulettes, a sword and feather. The militia-men were then ranged out in ranks, and the muster-roll called. I was particularly struck with the assemblage present. I looked in vain for the most respectable of our mechanics and neighbouring farmers.—The ranks were chiefly filled with the idle young men of the village and the tavern frequenters of the neighbourhood; in short, with men who hung loose upon society, and were eager for every adventure that would enable them to get through a day, without work, and might end in a drinking match. Captain Snip bustled about with becoming self-importance,—fixed this man six inches back, and that one as much forward, and having thus ranged them a la militaire, proceeded, by the aid of his Hand-Book, to induct them into the manual exercise. At the word "Shoulder fire-locks," a scene of confusion ensued. Some had their pieces on the right and some on the left shoulder, and they were ranged at all angles from a perpendicular to a horizontal line.—With infinite difficulty, and after repeated trials, the captain got them to order and proceeded to the next command. As he went on I observed that he became impatient and confused; the disorder into which his company were continually getting, surpassed his abilities to rectify, and his limited and superficial knowledge began to fail him. He quite lost his authority over his men; but by dint of storming, succeeded at last in getting some how through the business. The drum then sounded, and the gallant troop marched out to the commons, there to encamp for the day, carrying in their train all the noisy and idle boys of the town.
In the afternoon they again made their appearance, dusty, fatigued, and disorderly, and after a sham exercise in the street, were dismissed. It was a glorious day for the sellers of cakes, and beer, and brandy, and whiskey. Many a bottle that day was emptied of its fiery contents, and many a miserable wretch strengthened in the habits of vice and dissipation. Scarce a man of this valiant corps returned home sober. The tavern door was a scene of continued quarrelling and the most shocking profanity, till eleven o'clock.
Battle succeeded battle, to the infinite diversion of the by-standers, and to the edification and instruction of the lads of all sizes that were thronging to this school of morality. I know not how captain Snip felt upon descending to his ordinary employment, from such a height of military glory, but I myself have been sad and melancholy ever since, when I reflected upon the events of the day.
And what, fellow citizens, is the great good attained by these militia trainings? It is the idlest of idle dreams to suppose the recurrence, four times in the year, of such scenes as I have described, can make soldiers of our yeomanry. It may make idlers, it may make bullies, and drunkards, and gamblers of them; but what they learn of military discipline, of the subordination of a camp, is not worth a farthing candle. You lose to the state the labour of a hundred thousand men, that they may be placed under the tuition of some half-learned captain, who, perhaps, has never been in a camp, and who does not, in the course of years, teach them more than they could at any time learn as well and better in half a day's real service. The good done to the state by these militia laws is a mere shadow, and the wounds which they inflict upon the steady habits, the industry and the morality of the country, are awful and portentous. I believe I do not exceed probability in asserting, that one half of the drunkenness in the state, is induced or confirmed at these militia trainings.
But it is not only in the effects upon those who obey the mandate of the law, that this system is to be deprecated. Look at it, in what light you will, it is injurious and oppressive. A large portion of your fellow citizens are men who will not, in any cause, take the life or connive at the death of a fellow creature. They believe that the great Author of being retains in his own hand the power over life, and that it is impious in mortals to assume his prerogative.—No matter how true or false this may be, it is with them an article of religious faith, and as such is held sacred by our constitution. Whatever law interferes with this article of their belief is, to them, persecution. If man has no moral right to take the life of his fellow, government can have no moral right to oblige him to do it; and they who obey the law, in preference to their conscience, are traitors to their God. If they obey your military requisition, they become a party to a system altogether at variance with their faith. They cannot pay the fines which you impose for their refusal, for you demand them as an equivalent for what they cannot concede to you. Here then are they placed, without (according to their belief) the power of moving. If you insist upon the payment, you must despoil them of their goods. It is to be sure alleged, that the state cannot, with a due regard to its own safety, dispense with the military allegiance of its citizens. Admit this to be the case. Do you, in abstaining from the petty, alienating vexations of a militia law in time of peace, yield or forego the claim to this allegiance? You pass an edict oppressive to a class of citizens, whose motive for non-compliance is sacred in the eye of the constitution,—an edict, which your experience of the past assures you, they will not comply with, and you create, in order to enforce it, a race of harpies, who are trained under it in all the arts of oppression and plunder. And to what good end? Does one solitary dollar of these militia exactions pass into your treasury? Is it not, on the contrary, a well known fact, that after seizing upon twice or thrice the just amount of the claim, the proceeds of the sale of these goods melt away before they reach the public treasury? The ostensible object of the law is to train the yeomenry in the art of war. My word for it, its actual operation is more to enervate than to strengthen, and while it forms a dark blot on the escutcheon of our state, there is not, in its consequences, a single salutary effect to compensate for the hardships it inflicts upon the followers of the great statesman, who laid the foundations of our public and private prosperity, our liberal institutions; of all, in short, which has rendered Pennsylvania the boast and the envy of nations.