have been passed to satisfy the sailors. If anyone should think
this absurd, he may be referred to the remarkable expression of
opinion by some of the older seamen of Sunderland and Shields
when the Russian war broke out in 1854. The married sailors, they
said, naturally waited for the impressment, for 'we know that
has always been and always will be preceded by the proclamation
of bounty.'

The most fruitful source of error as to the procedure of the
press-gang has been a deficient knowledge of etymology. The word
has, properly, no relation to the use of force, and has no
etymological connection with 'press' and its compounds, 'compress,'
'depress,' 'express,' 'oppress,' &c. 'Prest money is so-called
from the French word _prest_--that is, readie money, for that
it bindeth all those that have received it to be ready at all
times appointed.' Professor Laughton tells us that 'A prest or
imprest was an earnest or advance paid on account. A prest man
was really a man who received the prest of 12d., as a soldier
when enlisted.' Writers, and some in an age when precision in
spelling is thought important, have frequently spelled _prest_
pressed, and _imprest_ impressed. The natural result has been
that the thousands who had received 'prest money' were classed
as 'pressed' into the service by force.

The foregoing may be summed up as follows:--

For 170 years at least there never has been a time when the British
merchant service did not contain an appreciable percentage of
foreigners.

During the last three (and greatest) maritime wars in which this
country has been involved only a small proportion of the immense
number of men required by the navy came, or could have come,
from the merchant service.

The number of men raised for the navy by forcible impressment
in war time has been enormously exaggerated owing to a confusion
of terms. As a matter of fact the number so raised, for quite
two centuries, was only an insignificant fraction of the whole.

V

FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT THE PRESS-GANG[60]

[Footnote 60: Written in 1900, (_National_Review_.)]

Of late years great attention has been paid to our naval history,
and many even of its obscure byways have been explored. A general
result of the investigation is that we are enabled to form a high
estimate of the merits of our naval administration in former
centuries. We find that for a long time the navy has possessed an
efficient organisation; that its right p