indictment against an official delinquent is invariably evaded by the introduction of some new feature into his case, hitherto unknown to any but his brother officials, which at once casts upon the assailant the stigma of having arraigned a public servant on incomplete information, and puts him out of court.
But if, in this the year of our Lord 1860, we have no means of discovering why millions of strong, brave, well-armed Englishmen should be so moved at the prospect of a possible attack from twenty or thirty thousand French, we have recently been placed in possession of the means of ascertaining why, some sixty years ago, this powerful nation was afflicted with a similar fit of timidity.
The first American war had then just ended—not gloriously for the British arms. Lord Amherst, the commander-in-chief at home, had been compelled by his age and infirmities to retire from office, having, it was said, been indulgently permitted by his royal master to retain it longer than had been good for the credit and discipline of the service. The Duke of York, an enthusiastic and practical soldier, in the prime of life, fresh from an active command in Flanders, had succeeded him. In that day there were few open-mouthed and vulgar demagogues to carp at the public expenditure and to revile the privileged classes; and the few that there were had a very bad time of it. Public money was sown broadcast, both at home and abroad, with a reckless hand; regulars, militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, fearfully and wonderfully attired, bristled in thousands wherever a landing was conceived possible; and, best of all, that noble school of Great British seamen, which had reared us a Nelson, had reared us many other valiant guardians of our shores scarcely less worthy than he. But in spite of her Yorks and her Nelsons, England felt uneasy and unsafe. Confident in her navy, she had little confidence in her army, which at that time was entirely and absolutely in the hands and under the management of the court; parliament and the people being only permitted to pay for it.
Yet the royal commander-in-chief was declared by the general officers most in favour at court to know his business well, and to be carrying vigorously into effect the necessary reforms suggested by our American mishaps; his personal acquaintance with the officers of the army was said to have enabled him to form his military family of the most capable men in the service;[1] his exalted position, and his enormous income, were supposed to place him above the temptation of jobbing: in short, the Duke of York was universally held up to the nation by his military friends—and a royal commander-in-chief has many and warm military friends—as the regenerator of the British army, which just then happened to be sadly in need of regeneration.
- ↑ "The duke has very unwisely taken over three or four boys of the Guards as his aides-de-camp: which will be of great disservice to him, and can be of no use to them."—Lord Cornwallis to Lt.-Col. Ross, 1784.
