The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

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were promoted in the same way who not only were not good

officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of

ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was

that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which

allured these men into the service was the profit of conveying

bullion and other valuable commodities from port to port; for

both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much

infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were not willing

to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of

war. A Captain might thus clear several thousands of pounds by a

short voyage; and for this lucrative business he too often

neglected the interests of his country and the honour of his

flag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most

direct injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was

ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn

when his instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all

this he did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him

in a post for which he was unfit maintained him there. No

Admiral, bearded by these corrupt and dissolute minions of the

palace, dared to do more than mutter something about a court

martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his

fellows, he soon found out he lost money without acquiring honor.

One Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the

Admiralty, missed a cargo which would have been worth four

thousand pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity,

that he was a great fool for his pains.


The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As the

courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn despised

by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in

Seamanship to every foremast man on board. It was idle to expect

that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of the tropics and

with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would pay prompt and

respectful obedience to a chief who knew no more of winds and

waves than could be learned in a gilded barge between Whitehall

Stairs and Hampton Court. To trust such a novice with the working

of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of the

navigation was therefore taken from the Captain and given to the

Master; but this partition of authority produced innumerable

inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps

could not be, drawn with precision. There was therefore constant

wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance,

treated the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware

of the danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a

struggle, yielded against his better judgment; and it was well if

the loss of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the

least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those who

completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and

thought only of making money and spending it. The way in which

these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy

as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if

for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines,

and kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the

crews, and while corpses were daily flung out of the portholes.


Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called

gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were to be found, happily

for our country, naval commanders of a very different

description, men whose whole life had been passed on the deep,

and who had worked and fought their way from the lowest offices

of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the most

eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who entered

the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against the

Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried

to the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a

line of valiant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John

Narborough; and the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir

Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong natural sense and dauntless

courage of this class of men England owes a debt never to be

forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much

maladministration, and in spite of the blunders and treasons of

more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the

reputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous

years. But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,

seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was

professional; and their professional knowledge was practical

rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple

as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in

their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up

of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and

curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed

those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew

Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear

that there was in the service of any of the Stuarts a. single

naval officer such as, according to the notions of our times, a

naval officer ought to be, that is to say, a man versed in the

theory and practice of his calling, and steeled against all the

dangers of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated mind and

polished manners. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in

the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not

gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.


The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact

estimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an

efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a

year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was the sum actually

expended, but expended, as we have seen, to very little purpose.

The cost of the French marine was nearly the same the cost of the

Dutch marine considerably more.48


The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century

was, as compared with other military and naval charges, much

smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there were

gunners: and here and there, at an important post, an engineer

was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no

brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers

could learn the scientific part of the art of war. The difficulty

of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later,

William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatus which he

brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on

the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as

rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration

resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the

Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gunpowder kept in the

English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic

writers as something which might well impress neighbouring

nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand

barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought

necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head of

ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a

year.49


The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was

about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The noneffective

charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can

hardly be said to have existed. A very small number of naval

officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half

pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain who had not

commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As the country then

possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that

had ever been at sea, and as a large proportion of the persons

who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the

expenditure under this head must have been small indeed.50 In the

army, half pay was given merely as a special and temporary

allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two

regiments, which were peculiarly situated.51 Greenwich Hospital

had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost

of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the

pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The King

promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for

architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the

maintenance of the invalids.52 It was no part of the plan that

there should be outpensioners. The whole noneffective charge,

military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand

pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds a day.


Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was

defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries

whose business was to administer justice and preserve order

either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were

remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of

the state. The Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the

country gentlemen who were in the commission of the peace, the

headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the King

nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by

fees.


Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most

economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the title

of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported

by the Turkish Company. Even at the court of Versailles England

had only an Envoy; and she had not even an Envoy at the Spanish,

Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head

cannot, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, have

much exceeded twenty thousand pounds.53


In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as

usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong

place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be

pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions

to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem

small indeed to the present generation. But the personal

favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures of

those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries

and pensions, when compared with the incomes of the nobility, the

gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will

appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom then very

little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond had

twenty-two thousand a year.54 The Duke of Buckingham, before his

extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen

thousand six hundred