CONSCRIPTION AND POPULATION. (FROM THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE.")

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3342, 2 April 1868, Page 3

CONSCRIPTION AND POPULATION. (FROM THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE. ")

There was a very characteristic article in Saturday's Times on the conscription in France. It begins by quoting with horror the sentiments of Marshal Niel on a motion suggesting that soldiers should be allowed to marry during the last three of their nine years of service. The Marshal appears to have scouted in humorously emphatic language the notion that to take the pick of the young men of the year out of the marriage market to be made into soldiers was any hardship on the French girls. Do we not leave them, he asked, 220,000 out of 320 000 who come up annually for the conscription, and are they not permitted in particular to hare the exclusive enjoyment of " those with a squint, the humpbacked, the clubfooted, the stutterers, the hard of hearing, who, as the Marshal philosophically observes, make iust as good husbands as those who are physically their betters? Moreover, if the French spinster is so unreasonable as to want " a whole man," she has only got to take him a little further on in life, and she may have plenty to pick and choose out of. The Times is horrified at this. » • ' It was scarcely conceivable that a speech in this strain should have been spoken in earnest, and, what is more, seriously listened to." France is only seventeenth on the list of European States arranged in the order of increase. Its population doubles in 198 years, whereas that of England doubles in forty-nine. There is no emigration from Prance, whereas the surplus of England and Germany is filling the waste places of the earth. Surely, is the inference, all this is very dreadful, very sad, and altogether at variance with all rational theories as to the nature and object of human existence. „, It certainly is altogether at variance with our English ways of thinking and feeling, and inasmuch, moreover, as it produces » state of things in Europe which is peculiarly unwelcome to us in all manner of ways, it is not surprising that we should regard it with disfavour : but as there is not the very slightest reason to fear that we English shall ever go wrong in the same direction, it might perhaps be worth while to look a little at the less obvious and commonplace side of the subject, and to ask for a moment whether, after all, the French have not something to say for their view of life as against ours. If any one were asked to put into a single word the ideal held up to Englishmen in every sort of way, ne wouldln all probability choose the word marriage The one object which the institutions of English society set before English people is to be theparents of a comfortable and prosperous family. .Let us have comfortable homes is the one great command, ment, the law, and the prophets of Enghsh life and we regard not merely with dislike, but with a certain kind of pious horror, the condition of a country which admits any other ideal whatever to interfere with this object. The things to be said a favour of this are sufficiently obvious, but surely they do not exhaust all that ought to be said upon the subject. There are other objects besides domestic comfort which ought not to be left altogether out of account in living, and there is, moreover, considerable reason to fear that if the ideal of domestic comfort is pursued exclusively and in a selfish manner, the pursuit will defeat itself, as all selfishness is apt to do. We cannot help thinking that the positions of France and England supply some striking illustrations of each of these truths. Look, in the first instance, at the conscription. It must, no doubt, be a grievous burden. It certainly puts the French Government into a position in which it is constantly tempted to do, and occasionally does, extremely violent and absurd things — so at least wp English are apt to consider them j but is there nothing to be said on the other side ? In ™ e P n * place it carries patriotism *nd public spirit tfcrougn every class of the whole French nation to an exteny which we fear is unequalled in this country. Ao an Englishman, England is often little more a -» W ■ to which he has to subscribe so ""^AJJXjJ .hape of rates and taxes. , To » renc 1 h ° l * n ' r Kjg is a sorfc of goddess wd mistriss, to whose service^he hw'made considerable periowrt manfam, *nd.from

whom be has learnt in the most emphatio way ft number of highly important lessons. To undergo Borne years » f military discipline, to learn to obey orders without hesitation or remonstrance, to discover by experience that other people are a great deal wiser, stronger, and better instructed than yourself, to do a number of things which at the time are very unpleasant, to learn to hear hardships and face dangers, all these are most wholesome lessons. Some five or six years of such life would be a far better training for most men than the same length of time passed in domestic endearments. It was frequently observed during the American civil war that the training which the men drafted for service got in the ranks was of infinite use to them, and formed a considerable set-off against many of the evils of the conflict. It took the nonsense and conceit out of them, and taught them to understand their own position in the world far better than they could have learnt it from the common pursuits of home life. No one can doubt that the Frenoh common people have some advantage? over the corresponding clasa in England both in manners and in intelligence. Is it quite certain that the universal diffusion of military service has nothing to do with it? Look at the effect which such service has on the average Englishman. The English recruit comes from a less respectable class than the French, conscript ; but when he has served his time he is generally licked into shape to a very considerable degree, and has learnt a good many of the lessons which public schools are supposed to teach the lads of the upper classes at an earlier period of life. As we are looking rather at the social than at the military side of the question, we will say nothing of the effect of the two systems upon the army itself, except that the result of the French system unquestionably is to put the army in a far higher position, morally and socially, than that which is occupied at all events by common soldiers in England. If the matter is properly considered, it is surely one of the greatest of all conceivable scandals that a profession which ought to be a school of virtue and honour should be generally regarded by the sentiment of this country as a refuge for scapegraces of bad character j and there can be no doubt that this sentiment powerf oily contributes to the occasional prevaleuce of that weak and maudlin habit of mind which looks upon all war as sinful, and upon the profession of a soldier as little better than a variety of the trade of a butcher, Quakerism and peace societies would hardly be possible in France. Let us, however, consider whether, when we have expressed as much horror as we please at the energetio language of Marshal Niel, we really gain so very much by following our own views. We have, it is true, no wicked conscription to prevent our young men from marrying our young women, but does the auspicious event take place ? Is it not, on the contrary, a standing subject of complaint that there are few countries in which the proportion of unmarried to married women is so large as in our own ? An article upon the subject has lately ap« peared in the North British Review, which has been the text of endless jeremiads in the daily papers, one of which apppared only a day or two ago in the Morning Post, There may be more connection than is obvious at first sight between a disinclination to marry and a way of conceiving and arranging the affairs of life which is based on the principle that noone is ever to be called upon to make sacrifices or to go through any process which is not a pleasant one at the moment when it is performed. If we extend our researches a little further, it may occur to some persons to ask whether, with all our devotion to domestic happiness, we are .after all by any means such a domestic or affectionate people as our next door neighbours, the French. Whatever may be the case as to the comparative closeness of the marriage tie in France and England, there can be little question that in other domestic relations the French have little reason to fear companion with the English. French parents and children— French brothers and sisters — are certainly not less closely attached to each other than the same relations in England. We should be inclined to say that in some cases the relationship was considerably closer. Finally, the Times insists on the fact that the French population increases less rapidly than our own, and that emigration from Francehas ceased. In the present state of the world, is this subject for lamentation! If the population has been checked bjr vice, no doubt it is ; but if the check is not vice^but prudence and self-restraint, is not the result obtained precisely the one which our own political economists have been preaching to us all for forty or fifty years as the most desirable of all possible results? It certainly is a great thing to have stocked the waste places of the earth j but now that they are pretty well stocked, or at all events thoroughly well able to keep up their own population, it does seem a little odd to put it forward as a peculiar excellence of our institutions that we export a large number of our countrymen and countrywomen to all sorts of distant places because we cannot find anything particular for them to do at home. This no doubt may be all right, but the propriety of it can hardly be regarded as a self-evident proposition.