1830.] King William the Fourth. 143 



to be shaved, excepting the Hussars, that piece of barbarism being part 

 of the essence of those frippery corps. Like all men of common sense, 

 he has looked on the effeminate and foolish changes of the military dress 

 with ridicule, and it is reported that he has ordered the whole army to 

 adopt the old national colour red ; the British service, at this moment, 

 being the most pyeballed on earth, and in fact, being nothing more than 

 a copy of every absurdity in dress and colour that could be culled from 

 the whole of the continental armies. The impolicy of this borrowing 

 system was obvious, in the first place, as a kind of admission that 

 Frenchmen and other foreigners were our masters in the art of war. 

 An assumption which they are always ready enough to make, and which 

 only increases their insolence. In the next, the more foreign, and less 

 like Englishmen the army looked, the more it was disliked by the 

 people, and the more it was inclined to be the tool of any individual, if 

 such should start up, who meditated designs against the liberties of 

 England. It had a further effect, in the actual increase of confusion and 

 hazard in the field, when no man could know an English regiment from 

 an enemy's one, a dozen yards off, and when, as has happened more 

 than once, the English infantry has been charged by foreign cavalry, 

 whom they naturally mistook for some of their own whiskered and blue- 

 coated lancers and hussars. Lastly, and by no means the least im- 

 portant by the imitation of the foreign costume, bedizened and 

 embroidered as it was, many meritorious officers were driven out of the 

 cavalry, through the enormous expense of the uniform ; while the 

 younger and richer coxcombs, who would at all times make better 

 mountebanks and mummers than soldiers, were urged to a career of 

 waste, folly, and effeminacy, that absurd and contemptible as it was, 

 absolutely began to infect the habits of the higher ranks of society. 



We hope the reign of the moustaches is over. The English soldier may 

 be content to pass in society without looking like a Russian bear, or a 

 French dancing-master. He could fight a dozen years ago better than 

 any foreigner, notwithstanding the disqualification of having his visage 

 visible ; and we hope the abominable dandyism of late years will insult 

 our national good sense no more. 



. But a still more valuable change may be at hand. The late King, of 

 whom we would still speak with all respect, was unfortunately a Hussar, 

 and his propensities were all for the army. The Navy declined misera- 

 bly, and this noble object of national honour and public saftey, was left 

 to sink into total disfavour. But a Sailor is now on the Throne, and we 

 must hope that he has the true feelings of an Englishman about him. 

 Let him then lose no time in raising the British Navy from its impolitic, 

 ungracious, and hazardous depression. It is of all descriptions of force, 

 the fittest for England ; its name is most connected with English glory ; 

 it is the arm which is most exclusively English, and which no foreigner 

 has ever been able to rival. It is the arm too which is the most suitable 

 to a people jealous of their liberties, and knowing that a military force 

 is always hazardous to those liberties, and that if the Constitution of 

 England should be destined to fall, it will be by an army in the hands 

 of some favourite general. Knowing all this, we say, Long live the 

 Navy of England ! Long live the Liberties of the People ! and Long 

 live the Sailor- King ! 



