ABSTRACT
While a large part of Victorian society were eager to identify their military with the aristocracy and the landed interest, a smaller section were quick to criticize the apparent effects of a restricted policy of recruitment. For some of these critics, their evaluation of the army was based on personal experience. To Radicals such as William Cobbett, the military was far from superior or gentlemanly:(1)
Those who were commanding me to move my hands or my feet thus, or thus, were in fact, uttering words which I had taught them; and were, in everything except mere authority, my inferiors; and ought to have been commanded by me…. But I had a very delicate part to act with these gentlemen, for while I despised them for their gross ignorance and their vanity, and hated them for their drunkenness and their rapacity, I was fully sensible of their power.
