Chapter V: The Last Two Centuries

The eighteenth century saw a constant struggle on the part of constitutionalists to get rid of the standing army altogether. Army Acts, which recognized and regulated the new force, were limited in their operation to a year at a time, and were passed under incessant protest. Grants to maintain the army were similarly restricted. Every interval of peace witnessed the rapid reduction of the regulars. But the times were adverse. Wars were frequent, and on an ever-increasing scale of magnitude and duration. The standing army had to be maintained, and, indeed, steadily enlarged.

But the militia for home defence was never allowed to become extinct, and it enjoyed an immense popularity. In 1757 it was carefully reorganized by statute.[20] The number of men to be raised was settled, and each district was compelled to provide a certain proportion. The selection was to be made by ballot, to the complete exclusion of the voluntary principle. During the Napoleonic war, when invasion seemed imminent, the militia was several times called out and embodied. In 1803 an actual levy _en masse_ of all men between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five was made. In 1806 the principle of universal obligation on which it was based was clearly stated by Castlereagh in the House of Commons. He spoke of "the undoubted prerogative of the Crown to call upon the services of all liege subjects in case of invasion."[21]

At the moment when he spoke, however, the imminent fear of invasion had been removed--removed, indeed, for a century--by Nelson's crowning victory at Trafalgar. From that time forward the military forces of the Crown were required not so much for the defence of the United Kingdom itself as for the provision of garrisons for the vast Empire which had grown up during the eighteenth century. These imperial garrisons had necessarily to be drawn from professional troops voluntarily enlisted. Thus the militia declined. An effort was made in 1852 to revive it, and again the underlying principle of compulsion was explicitly recognized. The Militia Act of that year[22] contains the provision: "In case it appears to H.M. ---- that the number of men required ... cannot be raised by voluntary enlistment ... or in case of actual invasion or imminent danger thereof, it shall be lawful for H.M. ---- to order and direct that the number of men so required ... shall be raised by ballot as herein provided." The effort at revival was unfortunately vain, and when in 1859 international trouble again seemed to be brewing, instead of appealing once more to the immemorial defence of the country, the Government weakly and with most deplorable results allowed the formation of a new body, the volunteers--a body whose patriotism was noble, whose intentions were admirable, but whose inefficiency became and remained a byword.[23] The militia continued ingloriously, mainly as a nursery for the regular army.

Finally, in 1908, Mr. (now Lord) Haldane absorbed both volunteers and militia into the new Territorial and Reserve Forces, the militia becoming a Special Reserve.[24] It is much to be regretted that the Act of 1908 did not expressly reaffirm the continued validity of the compulsory principle of service which from the earliest times had been the basis of the militia. But, though it did not expressly reaffirm it, it left it absolutely unimpaired and intact. Said Mr. Haldane himself in the House of Commons on April 13th, 1910: "The Militia Ballot Acts and the Acts relating to the local militia are still unrepealed, and could be enforced if necessary."

FOOTNOTES:

[20] 31 Geo. II, c. 26.

[21] Cobbett. _Parliamentary Debates_, vol. vii, p. 818.

[22] 15-16 Vict. c. 50. §18.

[23] For occasional levies of volunteers from sixteenth century onwards, see Medley, D. J., _Const. Hist._, p. 472.

[24] 7 Ed. VII, c. 9.

VI. CONCLUSION

Such is the condition of things at the present time. The principle of compulsory military service, obligatory upon every able-bodied male between the ages of sixteen and sixty, is still the fundamental principle of English Law, both Common Law and Statute Law. It has been obscured by the pernicious voluntary principle, which, in the much-abused name of Liberty, has shifted a universal national duty upon the shoulders of the patriotic few. But it has never been revoked or repudiated.

It is not National Service, but the Voluntary System, that is un-English and unhistoric. The Territorial Army dates from 1908; the Volunteers from 1859; the Regular Army itself only from 1645. But for a millennium before the oldest of them the ancient defence of England was the Nation in Arms. When will it be so again?

II

COMPULSORY SERVICE AND LIBERTY

[Reprinted, with the addition of References, from the _Morning
Post_ of September 28th, 1915.]