ENGLAND'S MOAT. academic interest for us at the present time. Touching the particular point with which he is concerned-whether sea officers should be gentlemen or "tarpaulins"-his conclusion is the sensible one that they should be for the most part gentlemen, but that they must know as much about the sea as the THE following discourse was written in the year 1694 by the Marquis of Halifax. He was a statesman and a man of letters. If in politics he was something of an opportunist, at least he made no secret of his opportunism; his royal masters, Charles II. and James II., usually succeeded in turning a man of first-rate ability into a cynic. seamen themselves. At the But about one thing he was time when he wrote there was in deadly earnest: he believed no school wherein gentlemen with all his soul that England could acquire that knowledge must have a supreme navy. save the hard one of experiBorn in 1630, he had lived ence, and the well-born very through all the Dutch wars; naturally refused to go through had watched the Common- the lower deck of that day on wealth wisely devoting half their way to the admiral's the national income to the cabin. Some of the successFleet; and had heard the ful leaders in the Dutch wars thunder of foreign guns when, were, as every schoolboy knows, with a Stuart on the throne soldiers, or men of no marine again and our Navy starved, experience. That they would in the hour of humiliation the have been the sooner successDutch sailed up the Medway. ful, and that the country Many times in his life the would have been saved much fate of England had seemed blood and money if they had to hang on victory or defeat been sea officers in all senses, at sea, as it will again; and men like Lord Halifax had his words have more than an the sense to realise. A ROUGH DRAFT OF A NEW MODEL AT SEA, 1694. "I will make no other introduction to the following discourse, than that as the importance of our being strong at sea was ever very great, so in our present circumstances it is grown to be much greater; because, as formerly our force of shipping con tributed greatly to our trade and safety, so now it is become indispensably necessary to our very being. It may be said now to England: Martha, Martha, thou art busy about many things, but one thing is necessary to the question. What shall we do to be saved in this world? There is no other methods, it is contrary other answer but this, Look to the homage we Owe to to your moat. that which must preserve us. It is time now to restore the sea to its right; and as there is no repentance effectual without amendment, so there is not a moment to be lost in going about it. "... There is one article which in its own nature must be allowed to be the cornerstone of the building;-the choice of Officers, with the discipline and encouragement belonging to them. ... "The first article of an Englishman's political creed must be, That he believeth in the Sea, etc., without that there needed no General Council to pronounce him capable of salvation here. We are in an island, confined to it by God Almighty, not as a penalty but as a grace, and one of the greatest that can be given to mankind. Happy confinement, that has made us free, rich, and quiet; a fair portion "The first question then will in this world, and very well be, Out of what sort of men worth the preserving, a figure the officers of the fleet are to that ever hath been envied, be chosen; and this immediand could never be imitated ately leadeth us to the presby our neighbours. Our sitent controversy between the uation hath made greatness Gentlemen and the Tarpaulins. abroad by land conquests unnatural to us. It is true we made excursions, and glorious ones too, which make our names great in history, but they did not last. "Admit the English to be giants in courage, yet they must not hope to succeed in making war against Heaven, which seemeth to have enjoyned them to acquiesce in being happy within their own circle. It is no paradox to say that England hath its root in the sea, and a deep one too, from whence it sendeth its branches into both the Indies. We may say further in our present case, that if allegiance is due to protection, ours to the sea is due from that rule, since by that, and by that alone, we are to be protected; and if we have of late suffered usurpation of The usual objections on both sides are too general to be relied upon. Partiality and common prejudices direct most men's opinions, without entering into the particular reasons which ought to be the ground of them. There is so much ease in acquiescing in generals [generalities] that the ignorance of those who cannot distinguish and the largeness of those who will not, maketh men very apt to decline the trouble of stricter inquiries, which they think too great a price for being in the right, let it be never so valuable. sea." on that side, it carrieth so men are most proper to be much authority with it, it made use of to command at seemeth to be so unquestionable, that those are fittest to command at sea who have not only made it their calling but their element, that there must naturally be a prejudice to anything there can be said against it. There must therefore be some reason extraordinary to support the argument on the other side, or else the gentlemen could never enter the lists against such a violent objection, which seemeth not to be resisted. "Before then that we conclude what sort of men are fittest to command at sea, a principle is to be laid down, that there is a differing consideration to be had of such a subject matter, as is in itself distinct and independent, and of such a one as being a limb of a body, or a wheel of a frame, there is a necessity of suiting it to the rest, and preserving the harmony of the whole. A man must not in that case restrain himself to the separate consideration of that single part, but must take care it may fall in and agree with the shape of the whole creature of which it is a member. According to this proposition, which I take to be indisputable, it will not I hope appear an affectation, or an extravagant fit of unreasonable politicks, if, before I enter into the particular state of the present question, I say something of the government of England, and make that the groundwork of what sort of There follows a long digression, in which he compares the merits and disadvantages of an Absolute Monarchy, a Commonwealth, and a Mixed or limited Monarchy. Regarding the first, he comes to the conclusion that trade cannot flourish under an autocrat, and that as England is made great by her trade alone, therefore "an Absolute Monarchy is as an unreasonable thing to be wished, as I hope it will be impossible to be obtained." The second form of government he places out of court simply because the country does not want it and is not fit for it. He waxes sarcastic : "There are certain preliminaries to the first building of a Commonwealth; some materials absolutely necessary for the carrying on such a fabrick, which at present are wanting amongst us. I mean Virtue, Morality, Diligence, or at least Hypocrisy. Now this age is so plain dealing, as not to dissemble so far as to an outward pretence of qualities which seem at present so unfashionable, and under so much discountenance. From hence we may draw a plain and natural inference, that a Commonwealth is not fit for us because we are not fit for a Commonwealth." He arrives at the conclusion that a "bounded Monarchy" is the only kind of Government suitable to the people of these isles. He is probably right; at least history is on his side. What manner of sea - officer then is the best under a limited Monarchy? "Every considerable part ought to be so composed, as the better to conduce to the preserving the Harmony of the whole constitution. The Navy is of so great importance, that it would be disparaged by calling it less than the life and soul of Government." bad Now, there seems to be some confusion of thought here. A State makes of its officers whatever it deserves; a country in a sound political and economic condition will almost certainly have good officers. Good government of any kind makes good servants; government bad servants. The one follows the other, as day follows night. It is a flat impossibility to graft a graft a good body of officers into a diseased State. Any country has the sailors and soldiers she deserves. It is impossible seriously to consider the question whether a good Navy can improve a rotten State, because a rotten State cannot possibly produce a good Navy. "Therefore to apply the argument to the subject we are upon, in case the officers be all Tarpaulins it would be in reality too great a tendency to a Commonwealth. In short, if the maritime force, which is the only thing that can defend us, should be wholly directed by the lower sort of men with an entire exclusion of the nobility and gentry, it will not be easy to answer the arguments supported by so great a probability that such a scheme would not This is certainly a ὕστερον TрóтEрov. There is no evidence that the promoted "ranker " in any service ever has or had a marked tendency towards democracy: the case is quite the reverse. But in the French Revolution the officers of the fleet who were gentlemen had their heads cut off or fled for their lives, and the plebeian merchant skippers and exboatswains who succeeded them made highly inefficient substitutes. The state of the country powerfully affects a navy; the state of a navy is only an index of and cannot be a determining cause of changes for better or worse in the body politic. "Let us now examine the contrary proposition, that all officers should be gentlemen. . . . Gentlemen, in a general definition, will be suspected to lie, more than other men, under the temptation of being made instruments of unlimited power; their relations, their way of living, their taste of the entertainments of the Court, inspire an ambition that generally draweth their inclinations toward it, besides the gratifying of their interests. Men of quality are often taken with the ornaments of government, the splendour dazzleth them so as that their judgments are surprised by it; and there will be always some that have so little remorse for invading other men's liberties, that it maketh them less solicitous to preserve their own. These things throw them naturally into such a dependance [?] as might give a dangerous bias; if they alone were in command at sea, it would make that great wheel turn by an irregular motion, and instead of being the chief means of preserving the whole frame, might come to be the chief instruments to discompose and dissolve it." What a strange doctrine, and what a lurid light on the public morality of the upper classes in the seventeenth century! A gentleman could not be trusted not to play entirely for his own hand; he was suspected of forming unworthy ambitions, and could not preserve a sane judgment in the dazzling light of advancement or Court favour. He was immoral-not to be relied upon. Is this a true picture? Immediately one thinks of the great Marlborough, and is inclined to answer Yes, it must be, to some extent. The description fits the Duke like a glove, and the Duke had many followers. This was a little later than Lord Halifax's time, of course, but the character of a class changes slowly. ture in the Navy of Gentlemen and Tarpaulins, as there is in the condition of the Government, of power and liberty. . . . It is possible the men of Wapping may think they are injured by giving them any partners in the Dominion of the Sea; they may take it unkindly to be jostled in their own element by men of such a different education that they may be said to be of another species; they will be apt to think it an usurpation upon them. . . But I shall in a good measure reconcile myself to them by what follows; (viz.) the gentlemen shall not be capable of bearing office at sea, except they be Tarpaulins too; that is to say, except they are so trained up by a continued habit of living at sea, that they may have a right to be admitted free denizens of Wapping. Upon this dependeth the whole matter, and indeed here lieth the difficulty, because gentlemen brought up under the connivance of a looser discipline and of an easier admittance will take it heavily to be reduced within the fetters of such a new model." If they do not behave themselves "the Government must be called in to suppress these first boilings of discontent." the Now the Elizabethan gentleman had his faults, but not these faults. Among the many evils the house of Stuart brought upon this land, not the least must be counted this demoralisation of the well-born. With regard to the charge A gentleman's honour remained of favouritism brought by the highly elastic, till a more spaci- Tarpaulins against the betterous age produced public schools born: "In this case," he says, and Universities and Services "when a gentleman is prewherein men learned once again ferred at sea, the Tarpaulin is to set the cause above the very apt to impute it to friend prize, and the service above or favour; but if that gentlethemselves. man hath before his prefer"... There must be a mix- ment passed through all the |