ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF LARRIKINS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1141, 13 January 1874, Page 4

ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF LARRIKINS.

The Spectator, in referring to the attitude of H.M.S. Svviftsure before Carthagena, remarks : —" The point that in the midst of all the broil, of the muddle of hostile powers, of social enemies, of conflicting international laws, of the entire coming affray, strikes most keenly on our imagination is that the sailors in that ship, the men upon whom their captain relies with an absolute certainty, if the order is to go to inevitable death, the men on board the Torch who were so furious as to engage the Mendez Nunez, which ought in ten minutes to have destroyed her, —the men who, if there were but enough of them and the order were given, would seize the Spanish Titan and pulverise Carthagena with her own shot, are the street Arabs, the class which the world holds dangerous, but. which England alone has made one poor effort to utilise. The Government has but held up its finger, and out of the dark lanes, and horrid closes and fetid courts, have poured children whose guardians are willing that they should be fed, clothed, and disciplined, and then serve for ten years, standing at twenty-seven free men to follow their own will. English in blood, streety—that is, sourcefiil—by habit, | thoroughly fed, accustomed from childhood to discipline, these men make the best sailors in the world—quiet and docile and powerful of limb, and as was shown the other day at Elmina, and to-day at Carthagena, as ready for battle as any old salts who ever swore, or chewed, or defied the cat. There they are, 20,000 of them, scattered over the the world, with the same good report from their officers everywhere with the same love for the Queen's service, and the same readiness for every other, however they will seldom enter. They have been turned, not by philanthropic petting or overmuch preaching, but by an immovable, though kindly discipline, from street lads into educated fighting men, as good as the very elite of the Prussian Army. It goes on to urge the extension of the system • adopted as yet only in regard to the navy to other branches of the service. It observes: " These boys are countless. Given the requisite time, and the 3000 a year we now take could be brought up to 10,000 without any perceptible strain upon the

State. Wholly apart from* the street Arabs, tlje unskilled laborers as a body when over-encumbered with boys are only too glad to give one or two of them over to a trade in which no entrance fee is demanded, in which they are well educated, and in which they can earn their livings all their liven. The ten years' service which seems so oppressive to recruits seems nothing to men who have been brought 1 up with that outlook, who never enjoyed the absence of discipline, and who never forget that their service is their pay to the State for a great boon* conferred upon themselves. What reason is their why the system should not be extended, why 3000 boys a year should not be trained for cavalry soldiers, and the artillery filled with them, and the sappers and miners, and half at least of the regiments of the line ? There is no original stain upon them. They are singularly amenable to a discipline sterner even than that of the army. They are proving themselves as brave as any men in the world, while their power is, from good food, good exercise, and good regulation, superior to that of the average men of their age" If they make such good sailors, one cannot help asking why they should not make good colonists.