CH. XIII. THE PRESS-GANGS. 537 on the coast of Essex, and thus succeeded in escaping.1 On another, when the sailors of a merchant vessel, which was lying off Gravesend, saw the boat of a ship-of-war approaching, they seized all the arms on board and drove off their assailants with a loss of one man killed and of several dangerously wounded." In 1779 a man was hung at Stafford for killing one of those who were endeavouring to press him, and a party of sailors were tried at Ipswich for the murder of a publican in whose house they were impressing sailors, but were acquitted on account of the impossibility of ascertaining who struck the blow. Of the vast sum of private misery produced by the system it is diffi cult to form an adequate estimate. One case-which was probably but one of many-happened to attract considerable attention on account of its being mentioned in Parliament by Sir William Meredith, in 1777. A sailor had been taken in the press that followed the alarm about the Falkland Islands, and carried away, leaving a wife who was then not nineteen, with two infant children. The breadwinner being gone, his goods were seized for an old debt, and his wife was driven into the streets to beg. At last, in despair she stole a piece of coarse linen from a linendraper's shop. Her defence, which was fully corroborated, was that she had lived in credit and wanted for nothing till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her, but since then she had no bed to lie on, nothing to give her children to eat, and they were almost naked. She might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.' The lawyers declared that shop-lifting being a common offence, she must be executed, and she was driven to Tyburn with a child still suckling at her breast.* Even worse than the authorised system was the illicit pressing for the East India Company. Great numbers of young men were inveigled or kidnapped by crimps in its service, confined often for long periods, and with circumstances of the most aggravated cruelty, in secret depôts which existed in the heart of London, and at last, in the dead of night, shipped for Hindostan. Several cases of this kind were detected. in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the escape of 1 Annual Register, 1770, p. 147. 2 Ibid. p. 149. Ibid. 1779, pp. 204, 215, 216 Parl. Hist. xix. 238. prisoners, and it was evident that the system was practised on a large scale.1 The regular press-gang was not confined to England, and it formed one of the gravest and most justifiable grievances of the American colonists. As early as 1747, one of the most terrible riots ever known in New England was produced by the seizure of some Boston sailors by the press-gang of Admiral Knowles. An English vessel was burnt. English officers were seized and imprisoned by the crowd. The Governor was obliged to take refuge in the Castle. The sub-sheriff was impounded in the stocks, the militia refused to act against the people, and the Admiral was ultimately obliged to release his captives. A similar resistance was shown to many subsequent attempts to impress in New England,3 and one of the first and ablest writers against the system was Benjamin Franklin. In England a great opposition was raised in the City of London in 1770 and 1771, at the time of the great press for seamen which was made when a war with Spain about the Falkland Islands appeared imminent. Press warrants in the City were only legal when backed by an alderman, and Crosby the Lord Mayor, and most of the aldermen refused to back them. Wilkes and Sawbridge, in their capacity of aldermen, dismissed some men who had been pressed in the City. A pressgang, which was beating a drum through the City, was brought before the Lord Mayor and reprimanded; and at a great meeting in Westminster Hall, at which both Wilkes and Sawbridge spoke, impressment was denounced as a violation of the Constitution. The agitation, however, did not spread. The attempts which had been made more than once since the Revolution to make impressing unnecessary, by a system of additional bounties and pensions, and by the formation of a reserve, had See several instances of the kind in Andrews' XVIII. Cent. p. 209–212. Phillimore's Hist. of Geo. III. pp. 60, 61. Annual Register, 1767, p. 82. 2 Grahame's History of the United States, iii. 295-300. Arnold's Hist. of New England, ii. 255, 256. See, too, on the pressing in New England, the very curious Journal of Thomas Chalkley from 1697 to 1741 (ed. 1850), pp. 313, 314, and Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Annual Register, 1770, pp. 157, 161, 162, 169, 174; 1771, pp. 16, 67, 68, 70. See vol. i. p. 504. In 1770, in order to escape the necessity of pressing, several of the chief towns subscribed additional bounties for sailors who enlisted voluntarily. Annual Register, 1770, pp. 150, 163. CH. XIII. ENLISTMENT OF CRIMINALS. 539 not succeeded, and it is remarkable that the legality and absolute necessity of impressment were at this time strongly asserted by three such different authorities as Chatham, Mansfield, and Junius.1 In the great difficulty of obtaining voluntary recruits for the American War, the press for sailors was very largely resorted to, and in 1776 it was especially fierce. In less than a month 800 men were seized in London alone, and several lives were lost in the scuffles that took place." While these means were employed for recruiting the navy, others of an equally questionable kind were found necessary for filling the vacancies in the army. I have noticed in a former chapter that it had been a common thing for press-gangs for the navy to hang about the prison-gates and seize criminals whose sentences had just expired, and this was not the only way in which the gaols were made to furnish their contingent for the defence of the country. Two or three Acts in favour of insolvent debtors had been passed, granting them their liberty on condition of enlisting in the army or navy, and in 1702 a system had begun which continued up to the time of the Peninsular War, of permitting criminals, who were undergoing their sentence, to pass into the army. In the beginning of the American War, this system appears to have been much extended. The usual manner of disposing of criminals under sentence of transportation had hitherto been to send them to America, where they were sold as slaves to the planters; but the war that had just broken out rendered this course impossible. For a time the Government was in great perplexity. The gaols were crowded with prisoners whose sentence it was impossible to execute. The governors of the African colonies protested against the introduction of a criminal element among them. An Act was, it is true, passed, authorising the punish 1 Walpole's Memoirs of Geo. III. iv. 181. Chatham Correspondence, iii. 480, 481; iv. 22, 43. Adolphus, i. 459. Junius' Letters (signature PhiloJunius). Campbell's Chief Justices, ii. p. 419. Chatham said, 'I believe every man who knows anything of the British navy will acknowledge that, without impressing, it is impossible to 3 equip a respectable fleet within the time in which such armaments are usually wanted.'--Thackeray's Chatham, ii. 217. 2 Walpole's Last Journals, ii. 75 77, 81. Clode's Military Forces of the Crown, ii. 12-15 ment of hard labour in England as a substitute for transportation to any of his Majesty's colonies and plantations,' and galleys were set up in the Thames where criminals, under sentence of transportation, were employed in hard labour.' But it soon occurred to the Government that able-bodied criminals might be more usefully employed in the coercion of the revolted colonists,2 and there is reason to believe that large numbers of criminals, of all but the worst category, passed at this time into the English army and navy. In estimating the light in which British soldiers were regarded in America, and in estimating the violence and misconduct of which British soldiers were sometimes guilty, this fact must not be forgotten.. It is indeed a curious thing to notice how large a part of the reputation of England in the world rests upon the achievements of a force which was formed mainly out of the very dregs of her population, and to some considerable extent even out of her criminal classes.3 The difficulty of procuring voluntary recruits for the army and navy seems to show that, if the bulk of the poorer population of the country did not actively sympathise with the Americans, a war with a people of their own race and language 116 Geo. III. c. 43. Walpole's Last Journals, ii. 38. Annual Register, 1776, p. 163. 2 My knowledge of this subject is derived from the Government Correspondence' in the Irish State Paper Office. On March 30, 1776, Lord Harcourt, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord Weymouth, complaining that the gaols in Ireland were full of convicts under sentence of transportation, as no merchant will contract to convoy them to America whilst the present rebellion subsists.' He proposed, therefore, to pardon such of them as were fit and serviceable men, on condition of their entering into his Majesty's land and sea service, as I shall direct.' Weymouth answered (April 23, 1776), • The measure proposed by your Excellency for granting pardons to prisoners who may be found, on proper examination, to be fit for the sea or the land service, has been of late in many instances pursued here, and his Majesty approves of your granting pardons to prisoners in the several gaols of Ireland under these circumstances. But it will occur to your Excellency how necessary it is, that the enlisting officers should, in the strongest manner, be enjoined to examine and report, before the pardon shall be granted, whether the prisoners are really fit for service, as a discharge cannot so properly be granted. It should also be observed that when they are engaged, particular care should be taken to secure this kind of recruits, and that they be considered rather in a different light from those who enter voluntarily.' It does not appear to have been only the British troops who were recruited from the prisons. Speaking of the Germans in the British service, Goltz wrote to Frederick (March 13, 1777), Les recrues hessoises sont en grande partie des malfaiteurs détachés de la chaîne.'-Circourt, Action Commune de la France et de l'Amérique, iii. 81. CH. XIII. PARTY ASPECTS OF THE AMERICAN QUESTION. 541 6 had at least no popularity among them. In concluding this review of the condition of English opinion in 1776, a few words must be added about the relations of the American contest to English party principles. Chatham, as we have seen, invariably maintained that the American cause was essentially the cause of the Whigs. In his great speech in the beginning of 1775 he asserted that the great fundamental maxim' of the British Constitution is, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent,' and that' to maintain this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the other side of the Atlantic and on this.' In December 1777, when the war had been long declared, he extolled the Americans as 'Whigs in principle and heroes in conduct,' and he openly expressed his wish for their success. Like the Whigs the Americans made the full development of civil liberty, and especially the defence of the great Whig principle that taxation and representation are inseparably connected, the main object of their policy, and the highly democratic character of their political constitutions lay at the root of their resistance. Public meetings, instructions to members, all the forms of political agitation that had of late years grown up in England, were employed by the popular party in America. On the other hand, all who esteemed licentiousness rather than despotism the great danger of England, all who disliked the development of the popular element in the Constitution, all whose natural leaning was towards authority, repression, and prerogative, gravitated to the anti-American side. In America the supporters of the English Government were invariably called Tories. In England the King, the followers of Bute, and the whole body of Tories, were ultimately enlisted against the Americans, while the support of their cause became more and more the bond of union between the Whigs who followed Chatham and the Whigs who followed Rockingham. By a true political instinct the clergy of the Established Church and the country gentry, who were the natural supporters of Toryism, were generally ranged on one side, and the Dissenters and the commercial classes on the other. So far the party lines of the American question appear very clear; but on the other hand, Grenville, who began the policy |