RECRUITING is the act of raising men for the military or naval service, either to augment the numerical strength of an army or fleet by new levies, or to make good the complement of any regiment or ship. The term may be used when men are obtained in any of the ways which the customs of nations have sanctioned, or the necessities of certain times may have required; but among military men it is employed when officers, especially appointed for the purpose, engage men by the offer of bounties to enter as private soldiers into particular regiments. The officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, while so employed, are said to be on the recruiting service; but the actual engaging of men as recruits is called enlistment; and the laws relating to this subject have been already noticed. Formerly private persona were allowed to enlist men for the army in any way that they might think beat ; but these having sometimes adopted, in order to procure recruits, violent and illegal means by which the public indignation was excited, the government in 1802 took the management of the recruiting department into its own hands; and now, by a clause in the Mutiny Act, any person advertising or opening an office for recruits without authority in writing from the adjutant general is liable to the penalty of twenty pounds.
In order to produce uniformity in the system of recruiting, and to ensure the employment of legal means only in obtaining men, the supreme control of this branch of the military service was vested in the adjutant-general of the army, and both Great Britain and Ireland were divided into several recruiting districts. To each of these was appointed an inspecting field-officer; an adjutant, whose duty it is to ascertain, in respect of stature and bodily strength, the fitness of any recruit for the service ; a paymaster, and a surgeon, the latter of whom is to report concerning the health of the recruit. Under the inspecting field-officer there are several regimental officers, who are stationed in the principal towns of the different districts in order to superintend the non-commissioned officers appointed to receive the applications of the persons who may be desirous of entering the service.
England and Scotland are divided into six recruiting districts, the head-quarters of which are respectively at York, Liverpool, Bristol, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh. Ireland is divided into three recruiting districts, of which the bead-quarters are Belfast, Dublin, and Cork. Superintending officers are stationed at the various important towns in the district according to the exigencies of the service.
In order to procure recruits, a sergeant or other non-commissioned officer mixes, in country pieces, with the peasantry at their times of recreation ; and, in towns, with artisans who happen to be unemployed, or who are diifeatinfied with their condition ; and, by address in repre senting whatever may seem agreeable in the life of a soldier, or by the allure of a bounty, occasionally induces such persons to enter the service.
The reports concerning the fitness of a recruit for military service are finally submitted for approval to the inspecting field-officer of the district, except when the distance of the head-quarters from the place where the recruit is enlisted is such that it would be more convenient to send the latter to the dep6t of the regiment to which he is to belong: in that case the officer commanding at the depot is especially authorised to sanction them.
Officers employed on 'the recruiting service are not allowed to interfere with one another in the performance of their duties; par ticularly, no one is permitted to use any means in order to obtain for his own party a man who has already taken steps by which he may become engaged to another.