SPEECH

OF MR. BROUGHAM ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

MARCH 11, 1816.

INTRODUCTION.

LORD CASTLEREAGH and his ministry, elated by their triumph over Bonaparte at the battle of Waterloo, had the ambition of still continuing an immense military establishment after the return of peace had rendered it wholly unnecessary.

For the year 1816, they proposed a standing force of one hundred and seventy-six thousand men, when the country was suffering under extreme embarrassments in every branch of its industry. A part of these forces consisted of the Household Troops, as they were called, to the number of ten thousand men, supported for mere parade in London or its vicinity, and confessedly of no use except in the case of mobs, which were then wholly out of the question.

When the debate took place on the army estimates, March 11, 1816, Mr. Calcraft moved to reduce the appropriation for the Household Troops to one half the sum proposed, intending, if this motion prevailed, to carry out the principle of retrenchment into the other branches of the army. In support of this motion, Mr. Brougham delivered the following speech, which is marked by that mixture of bold assertion, rapid argument, and fervid declamation which so generally characterized his speaking.

The speaker by challenges

called forth from the min

istry.

SPEECH, &c.

that, with all the professed anxiety of the noble Lord and his friends to go through the estimates, item by item; with all their pretended readiness and even desire to court full investigation; with all the bluster of their defiance to us, and the bravado more than once used, that we durst not

SIR,-Although I on a former occasion delivered my opinion generally upon these estimates, yet I am anxious now to state my sentiments in more detail upon a subject of such great importance, and the rather because of the defiances flung out from the other side to all of us to go into the ex-grapple with the question in detail, they have amination of it. I stand forward to take up the gauntlet which has thus been thrown down; and I affirm that the more minutely you scrutinize the several items of this bill, brought in against the country, the more objectionable you will find

them.

Dew title of "Household

I object, in the first place, altogether to the Objection to large force of guards which it is intended to keep up; and I even protest, Troops." though that is a trifle in comparison, but I do protest against the new-fangled French name of Household Troops, under which they are designated—a name borrowed from countries where this portion of the national force is exclusively allotted to protect the Prince against a people in whom he can not trust-is the appointed means given him to maintain his arbitrary power is the very weapon put into his hands to arm him against the liberties of his country. However appropriate the appellation may be there, it can not be endured in this nation, where the Sovereign ought never to have any reason for distrusting his subjects, and never can be intrusted with any force except that which the defense of his people requires. But the name is of far less importance than the thing. Has the noble Lord [Lord Castlereagh] made out any thing like a case for raising the amount of this force to more than double of what it was in 1791? Objection to If any such proof had been given, I their number. should not have been found among the opposers of the proposition. But the truth is,

themselves wholly shrunk from the inquiry, fled
from all particulars, and abandoned all attempts
at showing, in any one instance, from any one
conclusion, with a view to any single circum-
stance in the present situation of the country,
that there is the shadow of a ground for this in-
crease of force. We had the subject debated
generally, indeed, but at great length, a few days
ago, on bringing up the report; and it had been
repeatedly before the House on former occasions.
We have now renewed the discussion on the mo-
tion for going into this committee. We have
been in the committee for some hours. At this
very advanced stage of the debate have we ar-
rived, and though all the members of the govern-
ment have addressed themselves to the question,
many of them once and again, yet I defy any one
to point out a single fact that has been stated, a
single argument urged, a single topic used, to
prove the necessity which alone can justify the
scale these estimates are framed upon.
It has,
indeed, been said that 2400 of the guards are
destined for France, where I suppose the army
of occupation is required in order to demonstrate
how tranquil our famous negotiators have left the
whole Continent-how perfectly successful-
how absolutely final-the grand settlement of all
Europe is, upon which we so greatly plume our-
selves, and upon which, above all, the political
reputation of the noble Lord is built.'

But sup

After the deposition of Bonaparte, the allied Sov.

pose I pass over this, and do not stop to ask what | ty was unquestioned, though their wisdom might reason there can be for these 2400 men being be doubted, led them a good deal further that guards, and not simply troops of the line-those this. Meetings were encouraged to address the troops required to maintain our final and conclu- Crown, and testify the resolution to support its sive settlement, and enforce the profound tran- prerogatives. Bonds were entered into for dequillity in which Europe is every where enwrapt; fending the Constitution, believed to be threatsuppose I admit, for argument' sake, and in my ened. Pledges of life and fortune were given to haste to get at the main question, that these 2400 stand by the established order of things, and reguards may be necessary-what is to be said of sist to the death all violence that might be diall the rest? There remain no less than 7600 rected against it. Parliament was not alone in to account for. What reason has been assigned, countenancing these measures, proceeding from what attempt ever made by the noble Lord to alarm. Both Houses addressed the Throne, both assign a reason why 3600 more guards should joined in asserting the existence of great peril to be wanted more than in Mr. Pitt's celebrated the Constitution; both declared that the publie establishment of 1792? I desire, however, to peace was in danger from the designs of the evilhave this explained-I demand the ground for disposed. To read the language of those times, this enormous augmentation of what you call both in public meetings and their addresses, and your "household force”—I have a right to know in parliamentary debates, and resolutions of the why this increase is called for-I call for the rea- two Houses, any one would have thought that a son of it, and the reason I will have. Deduct all wide-spreading disaffection had shot through the you require, or say you require, for France; what land; that the materials of a vast rebellion were has happened since Mr. Pitt's time to justify you every where collected; and that the moment was in nearly doubling the number of the guards? tremblingly expected when some spark lighting That is the question, and it must be answered to on the mass should kindle the whole into a flame, Parliament and to the country-answered, not and wrap the country in destruction. Yet in that by vague generalities-by affected anxiety for state of things, and with these testimonies to its discussion by shallow pretenses of desire to menacing aspect, Mr. Pitt, at the very time when have the fullest investigation-by blustering de- he was patronizing the doctrines of the alarmists. fiances to us and swaggering taunts that we encouraging their movements, and doing all he dare not investigate. We do investigate-we do could to increase rather than allay their fears; advance to the conflict-we do go into the de- when he was grounding on the panic that pretails we do enter upon the items one by one; vailed, those measures out of which his junction and the first that meets us on the very thresh- with a part of the Whigs arose, whereby he suc old, and as soon as we have planted a foot upon | ceeded in splitting that formidable party-yet it, is this doubling of the guards. Then how do never dreamed of such a force as we are now you defend that? Where is the ground for it? told is necessary for preserving the public peace. What is there to excuse it or to explain? Mr. He proposed no more than 4000 guards; and No disorders Pitt found 4000 enough in 1792-then held that amount to be sufficient. throughout what is there to make 7600 wanting to require now? Look at home. Is the country less peaceable now than it was then? Quite the contrary. It was then disturbed; it is now profoundly quiet. Then, although there was no insurrection, nor any thing that could be called by such a name, unless by those who sought a pretext for violating the Constitution, and, by suspending its powers, securing their own, yet still no man could call the state of the country tranquil. Universal discontent prevailed, here and there amounting to disaffection, and even break-ous inhabitants ever more contented, more obeing out into local disorders; rumors of plots floated every where about; while meetings were held -unmeasured language was used-wild schemes were broached-dangerous associations were formed. Though no man had a right to say that the government was entitled to pursue unconstitutional courses for meeting those evils, every man felt obliged to admit that there was reason for much anxiety-that the aspect of things was lowering; the alarm was a natural feeling-that the duty of the executive was to be vigilant and to be prepared. The fears of men, whose loyal

the country

these troops, as in 1792.

ereigns kept for a time a large body of troops in France, to secure the execution of the treaty made by the Bourbon government.

required for tie

We are challenged to go into particulars; we are defied to grapple with the ques- The increase not tion in detail. Then I come to par- security of the ticulars and details with the noble metropos Lord. The main duty of the guards is the London service-that is the district to which their force is peculiarly applicable. To keep the peace of this great metropolis is their especial province: and I grant the high importance of such functions. Then I ask when London was ever more quiet than at this moment? When were its numer

dient to the laws, more disinclined to any thing like resistance? At what period of our history was the vast mass of the people, by whom we are surrounded, ever more peaceably disposed. more unlikely to engage in any thing approaching to tumult than now? Why, they have even given over going to public meetings; the very trade of the libeler languishes, if it be not at end, in the general tranquillity and stagnation of these quiet times. All is silence, and indifference, and dullness, and inertness, and assured. ly inaction. To the unnatural and costly excitement of war has succeeded a state of collapse, perhaps from exhaustion, but possibly from contrast alone. The mighty events of the latter days, when the materials for the history of a

forces.

not the shadow of justification for this increase
of force, what shall we say of the Much less does
state of foreign affairs? Above all, the state of
foreign affairs
what shall we say of the comparison demand these
between the face of those affairs now
and its aspect in 1792? That was really a
period of external danger. Never was there
greater room for anxiety; never had the states-
men, not of England only, but of all Europe,
more cause for apprehension and alarm-more
occasion for wakefulness to passing events-
more ground for being prepared at every point.
A prodigious revolution had unchained twenty-
six millions of men in the heart of Europe, gal-
lant, inventive, enterprising, passionately fond of
military glory, blindly following the phantom of
national renown. Unchained from the fetters
that had for ages bound them to their monarchs,
they were speedily found to be alike disentan-
gled from the obligations of peaceful conduct
toward their neighbors. But they stopped not
here. Confounding the abuses in their political
institutions with the benefits, they had swept
away every vestige of their former polity; and,
disgusted with the rank growth of corruption to
which religion had afforded a shelter, they tore
up the sacred tree itself, under whose shade
France had so long adored and slept. To the
fierceness of their warfare against all authority,
civil and religious at home, was added the fiery
zeal of proselytism abroad, and they had rushed
into a crusade against all existing governments,
and on behalf of all nations throughout Europe,
proclaiming themselves the redressers of every
grievance, and the allies of each people that
chose to rebel against their rulers. The uniform
triumph of these principles at home, in each suc-
cessive struggle for supremacy, had been fol-
lowed by success almost as signal against the
first attempts to overpower them from without,
and all the thrones of the Continent shook before
the blast which had breathed life and spirit into
all the discontented subjects of each of their
trembling possessors. This was the state of
things in 1792, when Mr. Pitt administered the
affairs of a nation, certainly far less exposed
either to the force or to the blandishments of the
revolutionary people, but still very far from be-
ing removed above the danger of either their
arts or their arms; and the existence of peril in
both kinds, the fear of France menacing the in-
dependence of her neighbors, the risk to our do-
mestic tranquillity from a party at home strong-

country were crowded into the space of a few months, have left the public mind listless and vacant. The stimulus is withdrawn, and change has had its accustomed sedative influence. They who had been gazing till their eyes ached, and they doubted if they were awake, upon the most prodigious sights ever presented in the political and the moral world-upon empires broken up and formed anew-dynasties extinguished or springing up the chains cast off by not merely a people, but a hemisphere; and half the globe suddenly covered with free and independent states-wars waged, battles fought, compared to which the heroes of old had only been engaged in skirmishes and sallies-treaties made which disposed of whole continents, and span the fate of millions of men--could hardly fail to find the contemplation of peace flat, stale, and unprofitable. The eye that had been in vain attempting to follow the swift march of such gigantic events, could not dwell with much interest upon the natural course of affairs, so slow in its motion as to appear at rest. And hence, if ever there was a time of utter inaction, of absolute rest to the public mind, it is the hour now chosen for supposing that there exists some danger which requires defensive preparation, and the increase of the garrison with which the listless and motionless mass of the London population may be overawed. Why, my honorable and learned friend [the Attorney General] has had nobody to prosecute for some years past. It is above two years since he has filed an ex-officio information, unless in the exchequer against smugglers. Jacobinism, the bugbear of 1792, has for the past six years and more never been even named. I doubt if allusion to it has been made in this House, even in a debate upon a King's speech, since Mr. Pitt's death. And to produce a Jacobin, or a specimen of any other kindred tribe, would, I verily believe, at this time of day, baffle the skill and the perseverance of the most industrious and most zealous collector of political curiosities to be found in the whole kingdom. What, then, is the danger what the speculation upon some possible and expected, but non-existing risk-which makes it necessary at this time to augment the force applied to preserve the peace of the metropolis? But I fear there are far other designs in this measure, than merely to preserve a peace which no man living can have the boldness to contend is in any danger of being broken, and no man living can have the weakness really to be ap-ly sympathizing with her sentiments, were the prehensive about. Empty show, vain parade, will account for the array being acceptable in some high quarters; in others, the force may be recommended by its tending to increase the powers of the executive government, and extend the influence of the prerogative. In either light, it is most disgustful, most hateful to the eye of every friend of his country, and every one who loves the Constitution-all who have any regard for public liberty, and all who reflect on the burdens imposed upon the people.

But if the internal state of the country offers

topics upon which both he and his adherents were most prone to dwell in all their discourses of state affairs. Yet in these circumstances, the country thus beset with danger, and the peace thus menaced, both from within and from without, Mr. Pitt was content with half the establishment we are now required to vote! But see only how vast the difference between the

2 This is a favorable specimen of Mr. Brougham's free, bold, animated painting and declamation, always made directly subservient to his argument, and filling his speeches with life and interest.

present aspect of affairs and that which I have | I am now speaking the language of the noble been feebly attempting to sketch from the rec- Lord's argument, and not of my own. He holds ords of recent history, no page of which any of it to be unfair toward the guards that they should us can have forgotten! The ground and cause be reduced, after eminently meritorious service of all peril is exhausted-the object of all the-he connects merit with the military statealarms that beset us in 1792 is no more-France disgrace, or at least slight, with the loss of this no longer menaces the independence of the station. He holds the soldier to be preferred, world, or troubles its repose. By a memorable rewarded, and distinguished, who is retained in reverse, not of fortune, but of Divine judgments the army-him to be neglected or ill used, if not meting out punishment to aggression, France, stigmatized, who is discharged. His view of the overrun, reduced, humbled, has become a subject Constitution is, that the capacity of the soldier is of care and protection, instead of alarm and dis-more honorable and more excellent than that of may. Jacobinism itself, arrested by the Direct- the citizen. According to his view, therefore, ory, punished by the Consuls, reclaimed by the the whole army has the same right to complain Emperor, has become attached to the cause of with the guards. But his view is not my view; good order, and made to serve it with the zeal, it is not the view of the Constitution; it is not the resources, and the address of a malefactor the view which I can ever consent to assume as engaged by the police after the term of his sen- just, and to inculcate into the army by acting as tence had expired. All is now, universally over if it were just. I never will suffer it to be held the face of the world, wrapped in profound repose. out as the principle of our free and popular gov. Exhausted with such gigantic exertions as man ernment that a man is exalted by being made a never made before, either on the same scale or soldier, and degraded by being restored to the with the like energy, nations and their rulers rank of a citizen. I never will allow it to be have all sunk to rest. The general slumber of said that in a country blessed by having a civil, the times is every where unbroken; and if ever and not a military government; by enjoying the a striking contrast was offered to the eye of the exalted station of a constitutional monarchy, and observer by the aspect of the world at two dif- not being degraded to that of a military despotferent ages, it is that which the present posture ism, there is any pre-eminence whatever in the of Europe presents to its attitude in Mr. Pitt's class of citizens which bears arms, over the class time, when, in the midst of wars and rumors of which cultivates the arts of peace. When it wars, foreign enemies and domestic treason vieing suits the purpose of some argument in behalf of together for the mastery, and all pointed against a soldiery who have exceeded the bounds of the the public peace, he considered a military estab- law in attacking some assembled force of the peo lishment of half the amount now demanded to ple, how often are we told from that bench of ofbe sufficient for keeping the country quiet, and fice, from the Crown side of the bar, nay, from repelling foreign aggression, as well as subduing the bench of justice itself, that by becoming sol domestic revolt. diers, men cease not to be citizens, and that this Driven from the argument of necessity, as the is a glorious peculiarity of our free Constitution? Respect for the noble Lord seemed to feel assured he Then what right can the noble Lord have to conshould be the moment any one exam-sider that the retaining men under arms, and in ined the case, he skillfully prepared the pay of the state, is an exaltation and a disfor his retreat to another position, tinction which they cease to enjoy if restored to somewhat less exposed, perhaps, but far enough the status of ordinary citizens? I read the Confrom being impregnable. You can not, he said, stitution in the very opposite sense to the noble disband troops who have so distinguished them- Lord's gloss. I have not sojourned in congressselves in the late glorious campaigns. This topic es with the military representatives of military he urged for keeping up the guards. But I ask, powers3-I have not frequented the courts, any which of our troops did not equally distinguish more than I have followed the camps of these themselves? What regiment engaged in the potentates-I have not lived in the company of wars failed to cover itself with their glories? crowned soldiers, all whose ideas are fashioned This argument, if it has any force at all, may be upon the rules of the drill and the articles of the used against disbanding a single regiment, or dis- fifteen maneuvers-all whose estimates of a councharging a single soldier. Nay, even those who try's value are framed on the number of troops it by the chances of war had no opportunity of dis- will raise, and who can no more sever the idea playing their courage, their discipline, and their of a subject from that of a soldier, than if men zeal, would be extremely ill treated if they were were born into this world in complete armor, as now to be dismissed the service merely because Minerva started from Jupiter's head. My ideas it was their misfortune not to have enjoyed the are more humble and more civic, and the only same opportunity with others in happier circumstances of sharing in the renown of our victories. * The unusual course taken by Lord Castlereagh, as minister, of going himself to the various conIt is enough to have been deprived of the laurels which no one doubts they would equally have gresses on the Continent in 1815, instead of sending won had they been called into the field. Surely, verest strictures from the Opposition, who considered surely, they might justly complain if to the disap-him as inflated by vanity, and in danger of being se pointment were added the being turned out of the duced into measures unbecoming the representative service, which no act of theirs had dishonored. of a free people.

valor of these troops no reason for still keeping them on foot.

an embassador, had before this drawn forth the se