There is no compulsion, and there is next to no pay.

It is at this moment drawn from every class of the community, and there are very few classes which would not earn a little more money in their ordinary trades.

It numbers very nearly as many men as it would if it were a conscript army; that is with the necessary margin of men unable to serve or needed to serve otherwise.

Ours is a country in which that democratic spirit which is common to Christendom is rather unusually sluggish and far below the surface.

And the most genuine and purely popular movement that we have had since the Chartists has been the enlistment for this war.