ABSTRACT
The persistent comment that the Victorian army was led by an amateur officer corps was not only a criticism of its status as a profession but was also a pointer to the causes of its political attitudes. This was an army which, despite the criticisms that could be made from time to time of its professionalism, still possessed a marked superiority of arms and organization over any other institution. Consistently, the military was in the forefront of technological development, yet, despite the material advantages which it enjoyed, there was little evidence to suggest that the army posed a threat to the civil authority. The officer corps was content to accept for most of the nineteenth century a subordinate position, and in many ways the example of the Victorian army appears to bear out the contention that it is primarily a fully professional military committed to the maintenance of its monopoly over a given area of action, which is a positive threat to the civil power. The military had the physical ability to intervene in civil affairs, but it lacked the motive for intervention, and although there were indications toward the end of the period that increasing military hostility toward the civil power weakened the validity of this conclusion, these indications are, by their rarity, a comment on a relatively persistent situation.
