THE DECLINE OF RECRUITING.

West Coast Times, Issue 240, 29 June 1866, Page 2

THE DECLINE OF RECRUITING.

The "Spectator" 'thus expresses its opinion as to the causes which permit Major O'Reilly's observation on the Army Estimates, that "nothing has beeri reduced but the sbidiefs, arid the^ have reduced themselves. 5 ' The lilafit state of the case is this : — A strong English or Scotch lad educated in a national school, with some spirit of adventure, aud some disgust of his daily life, ' has now two adventurous careers before him. He can emigrate, or lie can enter tho Army. The mental effort is in either case almost equal. In either, he cuts himself off from his family, and his native village, and all with whic'K he is familiar. But in the one case he sails to a land a pleasant climate, where everything is open, and competence assured to all who work, where his marriage need not be postponed longer than his own fancy dictates, and where no position except the Governor- T" ship or the Presidency is beyond his reach ; in the other he goes out to swelter ton years in the tropics — for' Indian service is how understood in all villages to be part of the soldiering — without a chance of marrying, or of rising above the grade in which he has been born, or of saving a shilling, and with the prospect of returning a discharged soldier. Which of these two careers is it likely that thd soit of lad who must for the future be tempted to enlist, will be likely to prefer ? Ireland, from this very cause, is fast closing aa a [recruiting ground; and as the sergeants come year by year into closer ' contact with the national schools, so year by year they will find the alternative thrown in their teeth.. The ignorant class which once filled the ranks is disappearing, and if we 'cannot replace them with the class which swarms towards; the factory and the workshop, the great oity, and the distant colony, the career of the British army, which has traversed the earth, will be nearly over., To bring then! into the ranks, service in the army must be mado at least as honorable as a handicraft. Till that has been acconw plished, till an officer can say without shame, • When I was a sergeant in the 00th,' the army will remain as he has now become, out of rapport with the ideas, and the wants, and, if you will, the prejudices of the day, and will be filled either with boys duped into it, or men who have failed in other walks of life. Suppose the volunteev force as it stands, placed for five years under mili* 1 tary discipline and incessant drill does anybody believe that any army in Europe, would resist its onset? Yet that is precisely what, were « the ranks' onco believed to be an honorable service leading to careers; the British army would be. Cromwell's, army was that, and this country has never seen such another. The system of purchase ! Vested rights! Our aristocratio con-, stitution ! Ts inventiveness really dead among us, and our statesmen struck suddenly barren, tbat we cannot devise expedients to get rid of difficulties like those^ difficulties which, were England in serious danger, would disappear like flax before flame?" .