ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding the proverbial popularity of the military amongst womankind, an average of only five to every ninety-five private soldiers are allowed to enter into the bonds of matrimony. No private can marry without the leave of his commanding officer. The soldier’s ordinary income, indeed, is not exceedingly well adapted to support those domestic relations and additions which belong to, and are to be looked for, in the married state. The weekly stipend of seven shillings and seven-pence does not hold out a very flattering prospect of wedded bliss; nor would it, but for an efficient application of the club-system, support bachelorhood in wholesome competence. The prodigious quantity of food, and the enormous expanse of lodging, required for a hundred thousand men, make them wholesale dealers in those necessaries in the largest sense of that term; and, under the management of their officers, they are fed and partly clothed out of their pay; but, in addition to it, Britannia annually provides each soldier with a coatee, a cap, one pair of boots, and one pair of trowsers. She gives him lodging gratis also. Despite these helps, however, his “pay and allowances” leave him too little to marry upon.
