is there a grain of difference between the Russian storming of Ismail and Praga and the English storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, or San Sebastian, that tarnished the lustre of the British arms in the famous Peninsular war. And should we be tempted to think that successes like these associated with the names of these places may be so important in war as to outweigh all other considerations, we must also not forget that the permanent military character of nations, for humanity or the reverse, counts for more in the long run of a people’s history than any advantage that can possibly be gained in a single campaign. Enough has, perhaps, been said of the unpopularity of military service, and of the obvious causes thereof, to make it credible that, had the system of conscription never been resorted to in Europe, and the principle of voluntary enlistment remained intact and universal, the difficulty of procuring the human fighting material in sufficient quantities would in course of time have rendered warfare impossible. As other industries than mere fighting have won their way in the world, the difficulty of hiring recruits to sell their lives to their country has kept even pace with the facility of obtaining livelihoods in more regular and more lucrative as well as less miserable avocations. In the fourteenth century soldiers were very highly paid compared with other classes, and the humblest private received a daily wage equivalent to that of a skilled mechanic;[302] but the historical process has so far reversed matters that now the pay of the humblest mechanic would compare favourably with that of all the fighting grades lower than the commissioned and warrant ranks. Consequently, every attempt to make the service popular has as yet been futile, no amelioration of it enabling it to compete with pacific occupations. The private’s pay was raised from sixpence to a shilling during the wars of the French Revolution;[303] and before that it was found necessary, about the time of the war with the American colonies, to bribe men to enlist by the system (since abolished) of giving bounties at the time of enlistment. Previous to the introduction of the bounty system, a guinea to provide the recruit with necessaries and a crown wherewith to drink the king’s health was all that was given upon enlistment, the service itself (with the chances of loot and the allied pleasures) having been bounty enough.[304] Even the system of bounties proved attractive only to boys; for as the English statesman said, whose name is honourably associated with the first change in our system from enlistment for life to enlistment for a limited period, ‘men grown up with all the grossness and ignorance and consequent want of consideration incident to the lower classes’ were too wary to accept the offers of the recruiting department.[305]