The liability to this brutal and degrading punishment kept all but the dregs of the populace from enlisting in the British army.

It helped to fix the deep gulf between officers and men.

Forty years later Napoleon Bonaparte, despot though he might be, was struck by this separation.

He himself went freely among his men, warmed himself at their fire, and talked to them familiarly about their work, and he thought that the British officer was too aloof in his demeanor.

In the British army serving in America there were many officers of aristocratic birth and long training in military science.