ISSUE 34 : May/Jun - 1982 - Australian Defence Force Journal

AUSTRALIA'S ARMY RESERVES: 1788-1854 55
Colbum's appeared to be whistling in the
dark. While expressing approbation for Louis'
bold stroke, it felt that it would be criminal to
overlook the assistance he had received from
the French Army, even though there were
reports of a strength reduction obviously aimed
at disarming apprehension. There was an
unwillingness to suppose
that a ruler of Louis Napoleon's indisputable
tact would advisedly attempt a hostile
descent on our shores, as common rumour
now considers probable; for the enterprise,
however successful for the moment, would
infallibly terminate in his own destruction.^
The castle was surrounded by a moat which
could be bridged by steam or fog; the Militia,
under existing Acts, would take at least nineteen
weeks before it was actually embodied;
the real answer was to strengthen the Army,
particularly the artillery.
Most observers believed that without Palmerston
it was only a matter of time before
the Ministry would fall. In February 1852,
Russell, described by Sydney Smith as having
so sublime a conceit that he would cheerfully
have undetaken to command the Channel Fleet
as to perform an operation for the stone,
introduced a new Bill for strengthening the
Militia.-"
Fear of the French in 1845 had roused
interest in the Militia, which was then in a sad
way. The ballot had been discontinued fourteen
years before, and over the following years the
Staff dispersed. While the population had
almost doubled, the existing Act only authorised
42,000 men to be enrolled, but before
training could commence all 'eligible' men
would have to be enrolled and the ballot
drawn. Before Peel could take action, however,
he was out of office. Fox-Maule presented a
Bill in 1848, but nothing eventuated — the
crisis had passed, and in any event the Russell
Administration did not appear to be able to
make up its mind on the shape of the force.
Russell's Bill was simple. The new force
would be a local Militia, which would only be
called out in time of invasion. Those aged
twenty would be enrolled, of whom one-fifth
would be ballotted-in, thereby avoiding disrupting
the lives of older men, but at the same
time avoiding the expense of supporting their
wives and children. Substitutes could be hired
from those ballotted-out.
Asserting that this action was not being
taken under pressure of panic, and that the
measure four years earlier had only been
defeated because it had been tied to increased
tax proposals, Russell also proposed to increase
the regular forces by 4,000 infantry and 1,000
artillery — an action described by Colburn's
as 'having proclaimed our nakedness to
Europe, [we] now take refuge in a fig leaf.
Palmerston now had his 'tit for tat with John
Russell'. Attacking the Militia proposals he
concentrated on the key issue of whether it
would be 'local' or 'general'; whether it should
be raised by ballot in local areas, or by bounty
throughout England; available only within the
limits of the several counties in which it was
raised, or a garde mobile which could be sent
anywhere in England where its services were
required. On this latter point Russel intimated
that the force should be applicable to the
whole Kingdom, whereupon Palmerston stated
the Bill was antagonistic to its title, and
proposed an amendment. The Government was
defeated, and the Earl of Derby, who had
succeeded to the leadership of the Conservatives
on the death of Robert Peel (the younger),
came to power with Sir John Pakington as
Secretary for War and the Colonies, and
William Beresford as Secretary at War. 44
Colburn's was not surprised — the 'idea of
a local militia, as an available defensive force
in case of invasion, was worthy of the impotent
brain of a worn-out family Minister. It was
the abortive device of a feeble and distempered
mind strained to the utmost in its effort to
meet the emergency, and utterly unequal to the
task'. At the same time it took Grey, the
retiring Colonial Secretary, somewhat intemperately
to task for recalling Sir Harry Smith
from the Cape — 'this wretched abortion of
a SECRETARY, this miserable Whig imposter,
this zany of an imbecile, leprous and degraded
Cabinet'. Fortesque, just as conservative in his
outlook, was kinder when dealing with the
same event. Grey 'appears, in fact, to have
been a man with no powers of imagination.
To say that he was ignorant of the barest
elements of war is only to say that he was an
English Minister of the middle of the nineteenth
century'. 4 '
The Illustrated London News considered
that Russell had been lucky to have been
turned out of office over the Militia Bill, since
there were other possibilties — the Budget,
Electoral Reform and the most damaging of