CHAPTER XI

WHITHER NOW?

England was in a state of unrest. She had, as yet, been none too
successful in the war with France. From the king's castle to the poorest
slum in Seven Dials there was a temper bordering on despair. Ministries
came and went; statesmen rose and fell. The army was indifferently
recruited and badly paid. England's battles were fought by men of whom
many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England's rise or fall.

In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against
the smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased.
In more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious
kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in
the general disregard of the seamen's position, in the means used for
recruiting, the omens of disaster. The police courts furnished the navy
with the worst citizens of the country. Quota men, the output of the
Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the
king's service.

The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile marine,
taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the harbours
of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying them the
right of visiting their homes. The press-gangs did not confine their
activities to the men of the mercantile marine. From the streets after