The reader will not always agree with Mp. Fortescue's views om political and economic matters, but when he deals with military affairs, and especially with the conditions under which the sofdier lived in the early years of the nineteenth century, there will be very few found to question the accuracy of his record. It is hardly possible to conceive how public opinion could have been so indifferent to the welfare of the private soldier. He was starved and cheated, and compelled to live under conditions of overcrowding and insanitation, which even at home made the Army death-rate double that of the civil population, and on some foreign stations rendered it necessary to replace the personnel of battalions every second year. The bounty which the soldier was supposed to receive on enlistment was stopped to pay for necessary articles of his kit, for which it was insufficient and he invariably began his military life in debt.
be pay of a private of the infantry of the line was seven shillings a week, of which by regulation three shillings and sixpence was intercepted for his mossing, one shilling and tenpence halfpenny for maintenance of his "necessaries" and for his washing; the balance, if he was lucky, was paid in daily penny into his hand.
instalments of twopence half-
Often the soldier received no pay whatever for six months after enlistment. His daily ration was one pound of bread and three-quarters of a pound of beef—often salted—served in two meals, the last at half-past twelve noon, So that he wag often for nineteen hours at a stretch without food. The overcrowding and insanitation was appalling. "The only urinals for barrack-rooms were wooden tubs, the stench of which was appalling. Moreover the same tubs when emptied in the morning were the only vessels furnished to the soldier to wash in." No wonder that consumption and infectious disease were rampant, The barrack-rooms were shared by the wives of soldiers married "on the strength," the proportion of wives allowed in barracks being six to every hundred men. It was to these rooms that the soldier brought his newly-wedded partner' for the honeymoon, and it was in these that his children were born, al] in the presence of his comrades. If infectious sickness showed itself among the children—and there were swarms of them with every regiment—it was conceal-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.