In the eyes of sober citizens of the industrial class, the life of the soldier seemed only one degree less dismal and shameful than the career of the hulks. As a fact the soldier's lot was perhaps half a century ago not much more tolerable than that of the convict shipped for his offences beyond seas. A prison with a chance of being killed in it represented in the popular eye the existence of the private soldier. It involved transportation with hard labour as a matter of course. One battalion first raised in 1700 had been the whole of those 137 years abroad on active service. When his destiny was less severe than this, a life insufferably tedious was led by him in barracks pestilently unhealthy. To-day, upon a different plane of comfort, and on a reduced scale of luxury, the private soldiers may be said to enjoy the same recreations and opportunities of improvement as his officer. He is the master of his own time during several of the best hours in every day. He has no more difficulty in obtaining leave up to midnight for a theatre visit than a Woolwich cadet in getting a Sunday exeat from the Academy. Rooms for study and pastime are provided within his barracks. Domestic life is no longer incompatible with his military service. But in 1837 married quarters did not exist. Those who had wives and children herded with their unmarried comrades in scandalous confusion. Whatever, with a view of completely brutalizing if possible the men who fought their country's battles, could in addition to these things be devised, was not wanting. Punishments were meted out with indiscriminating severity. The Queen had been on her throne some years before the lash was limited to time of war. Among the officers brought up in the school of Wellington a prejudice in favour of flogging as a simple, efficacious sort of British punishment lingered perhaps till 1880, when on a memorable occasion after an exciting debate that had signalized the opening of a new era of parliamentary obstruction, the House of Commons decreed its entire abolition. As has been already said, the policy to which the Duke of Wellington had from political exigencies been as he thought compelled, was to sacrifice to the maintenance of a small and often invisible body of regulars every other branch of the Service.