Lords Sitting of 19 March 1808

PROTEST ON THE MUTINY BILL.
The Mutiny Bill was read a third time and passed. When the question for the third reading was put earl Grey rose and said, that he should move that the words "allowing individuals to enlist for unlimited service" be left out of the bill. His lordship said he did not mean to discuss the point, and only made the motion that his opinion of the clause might be inserted in the journals of the house. The motion was then put, and it was negatived without a division.
The following Protest was entered upon the journals.—"Dissentient: 1st. Because the words proposed to be omitted, by establishing an option between limited and unlimited service, effect, an alteration in a system, the success of which has always appeared to us to depend on a long, scrupulous, and uninterrupted adherence to the principles on which it was originally formed. The inducement held out to enlist, by limiting the term of service, is founded on no immediate bounty or reward, but on the hope, of future and distant advantages. A confidence in its stability is, therefore, absolutely necessary to its success, and any alteration must tend to shake that confidence, and to create an apprehension in the minds of the people, that changes from time to time will be introduced, that faith to individuals will not be scrupulously maintained, and that the ad-
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vantages held out to them will become precarious and uncertain, as well as remote. Nor are such suspicions likely to be allayed by the reflection, that the alteration in question was chiefly supported by persons avowedly hostile to the principle of limited service, and that the arguments urged in favour of it in debate, were more calculated to recommend a total subversion, than a modification or improvement, of the system so recently established.—2d. Because the particular alteration, now adopted, tends to counteract the beneficial operation of the original measure, by rendering complicated a system which it was peculiarly desirable should be distinctly understood by that class of the community from which our army is chiefly recruited.—3d. Because no necessity, arising from any failure of the system established in 1806, has been, or can be, urged in justification of the change now introduced. On the contrary, the marked preference given to limited service, by those who enlisted from the militia, under the act of last year, the general success, and above all, the regular and progressive improvement, which has hitherto attended the recruiting a limited term of years, have exceeded the hopes, and confirmed the expectations, of the most sanguine of its supporters.—4th. Because the change is not recommended by any immediate advantage, nor adapted to any extraordinary exigency of the time; but calculated solely, in the view of its supporters themselves, to surmount difficulties at once speculative and remote.—5th. Because the admission of soldiers for life tends to perpetuate the existence, and to aggravate the inconveniences, of that mixture in the conditions of service, which, when temporary and unavoidable, formed the most plausible objection to the original measure.—For these reasons we thought it hazardous to adopt a regulation, recommended by no motive of convenience, and liable to many serious objections; we were unwilling, hastily and wantonly, to interfere with what was apparently well; and we were anxious to record our disapprobation of an experiment, which must disturb, and may, eventually, if not intentionally, subvert a system, calculated to produce a constant, ample unoppressive, and cheap supply of recruits to the army. (Signed) Vassall Holland, Grey, Jersey, Essex, Cawdor."