people for a warrant, and fear to rebuke or disclaim an unwise or passionate policy. Hence uneasiness, perturbation, a chronic desire for change rapidly converted into action. If at such times any state-and there are others than England-shows by even rule, a daily beauty in the march of government which makes ugly the political life of those governments whose promise and performance are set asunder, it becomes the object of silent suspicion or of open envy.

It is an offence to show an unfettered press to a people languishing under a censorship; a free exercise of Christian faith to communities overlaid by ecclesiastical domination; open courts, and the judgment of fellow-citizens, to suitors breathless before submissive judges; a legislature sharing national feelings, to men whose public interests are debated by the paid servants of the government, and to the government alone responsible.

Wherefore some rulers may believe, as they hope, that England may be turned from her settled policy by dread of invasion; and hence the care with which the European mind is familiarized with the project.

But it does not become England to be disquieted with vain fears. Yet before we consider the national defences in their general application, it is desirable to inquire on what grounds the ancient and constitutional arming of the British people has been revived, and to note the conditions of the times by which such a course was suggested and justified. For, doubtless, a serious responsibility rests upon those statesmen whose policy arins a nation. It is to declare that the bonds of confidence which in ordinary times unite European states are, if not severed, at least relaxed. It is to recur deliberately to the policy of a period of armed force, which had apparently passed away. Wherefore a mere transitory suspicion will not be warrant sufficient for a general armament, more or less fraught with provocation and suggestive of distrust, albeit for purposes dently defensive.

evi

In considering the question of the national defences, needful as is a just appreciation of the subject to the British honour, security, and peace, a strange fluctuation of feeling in the public mind must be remarked, from heedlessness to defiance and alarm. The Great Duke in vain endeavoured to rouse his countrymen from their dream of the first condition; the public mind is now oscillating between the two last, with a manifest tendency to the second mood.

It is to show that, since the duty of maintaining national defences must be discharged-so long as England has an European policy to enforce, colonies to assimilate, commerce to extend, and free action to maintain-such task is neither diffi

Revival of Militia Organization.

31

cult nor costly, neither fraught with danger to public freedom nor to private morality, that the following remarks are addressed.

And an attempt has been made, both in these pages and in a professional journal, to estimate the uttermost weight of the storm which this country may be necessitated to encounter; so that, in the words of the epigraph, schemes for our destruction may be parried in the face of day, and in defiance of known and appreciable perils.

In 1847 more than a quarter of a century had elapsed in peace, unbroken as regards national conflicts between the great European Powers, except by the short campaign that included the siege of Antwerp among its incidents, and resulted in the establishment of the kingdom of Belgium. The struggles of the French Revolution of 1830, and of the Polish war against the suzerainty of Russia, had subsided into a normal condition of government; and the Spanish Peninsula, although fermenting as ever with strife, had ceased to give cause for diplomatic anxiety to politicians. Whatever of intelligent discontent, or of unsatisfied ambition, yet lurked among the revolutionary classes of Europe, was inactive and unheeded, and on the horizon appeared for the moment no token of the coming storm.

Yet the level surface of European politics had, from time to time, been ruffled by those indications of tempest which warn the careful observer that the hurricane will follow. The arrest of a missionary in the South Seas had imperilled the good feeling between England and France. The cordiality with which this country had accepted the political decision of the French nation in 1830 had ceased to exercise a favourable impression. Mutual distrust had replaced previous confidence; while public attention was painfully directed to the state of our national defences by the correspondence between the late Duke of Wellington and Sir John Burgoyne on the subject of invasion.

On the reassembling of Parliament after the Christmas recess in January, 1848, an addition of 10,000 men to the regular army, and a limited training of the militia force were proposed; but, being accompanied by a resolution for the increase of the income tax, the motion was unfavourably received, and forthwith withdrawn.

And hence the national defences were enlarged or curtailed without any fixed plan until 1852, when the project of putting the militia force into a thorough state of efficiency was reintroduced; and, after occasioning the destruction of the Liberal Ministry, was finally adopted by the Government of Lord Derby. And thus, while the French Republic was once more

suffering change into an Empire,-a change fraught with perturbation to Europe,-the military policy of England was replaced on the footing of more warlike times.

And yet, in the very presence of political contingencies which augured ill for the maintenance of general tranquillity, the British Government showed no haste, testifying to an exaggerated alarm, in preparations for the possible interruption of peace. The English militia was called out for muster, rather than for training, in the autumn of 1852; and until the following spring, an absence of warlike display left the country in its usual aspect of tranquil industry, and in the enjoyment of the advantages which the sound financial policy then recently adopted had so largely, rapidly, and safely developed.

The first note of change in the military policy of the Empire was sounded by the trumpets of the cavalry marching on the camp at Chobham, in the spring of 1853.

No one who gazed on the steady advance of the regiments which revived the aspect of war, once so familiar to that district, foresaw that, before twelve months should have elapsed, these gallant men would have endured the deadly heats and the destroying pestilence of the Bulgarian swamps; that before them defiled, unconscious of their destiny, soldiers who would find a glorious death beside the unknown Alma, or on the then solitary heights of Sebastopol. Surely it was no ordinary inspiration that warned of coming strife before war was yet upon the gale!

But, as the autumn brought the tidings of the massacre of Sinope and of the defence of Silistria, all men perceived that once more Europe was to be vexed with the plague of war; and England, as of old, addressed herself steadfastly to the

emergency.

And in what temper did the note of conflict find the nations of Europe ?

A generation had arisen, and was just passing into the influential classes of political society, which knew war only by its traditions. Of actual experience there was but little. The children had forgotten the sufferings of their fathers, but cherished the memory of the triumphs which each nation had, in its turn, prized as compensation for humiliations endured.

Europe was divided into two camps :-In the one the partisans of the Russian Alliance, and they were the sovereigns. who feared their people; and in the other, the enlightened men who held that the security for European progress which Russian influence, as exercised upon the monarchs of eastern and central Europe, threatened to delay or to arrest, was alone to be found in the alliance of England and France.

Disturbed State of Europe in 1853.

33

At such a season the exaggerated pretensions of the Czar, intensified by the personal bearing of his envoy, precipitated the combined forces of England and France on coasts left unvisited by European war-ships since the last Genoese flag was lowered from the ramparts of their Black Sea forts. Yet it might well have happened that the alliance had been adjusted with a different bearing, and the scene of conflict transferred to other shores, had not the sagacious genius of the French Emperor warned him to withdraw pretensions, not altogether dissimilar, on behalf of the Latin Church, more distrustful, it would seem, of his fortunes, or of his cause.

Truly it has been a grievous trial to all to whom civil progress and intellectual development are precious to all who hoped that European policy had turned at length from the by-paths of a profligate diplomacy into the broad highway of truthful, national communication and cordial understandingto all who believed that governments were made for nations, not that nations should be given in appanage to governments, and who thought that surely the day had at length dawned when principles slowly and painfully elaborated should be ratified and adopted into the common law of Christendom,— thus to be cast back on the chance arbitrement of war. And it was naturally apprehended that a war commenced on such grounds would run a course, as of old, marked with all the frightful varieties of that plague.

Thus, after long peace, war again burst forth-war of wicked origin and of base type, waged to acquire new possessions, to beat down a struggling people, and to consolidate disputed sovereignty.

Yet one fact was plain, that, whatever might be the principles of government-imperial, autocratic, monarchical, or republican-under whatever form of administration the supreme power in each state had since 1848 been maintained, destroyed, or re-constituted, traceable throughout each stage of policy, permanent or transient, within the borders of each European state seethed a conflict of opinions, of which the determining cause is as yet faintly indicated, pregnant though the future be with change to be effected by agencies stupendous and unforeseen. And to one looking forth on this dim ocean of European politics, small encouragement is given for the belief that the problems now agitating the universal mind of Europe will receive a peaceful and permanent solution. The flying steps of Truth' will be pursued across the brazen bridge of war.'

Some such considerations, doubtless, rather than a mere instinct of administrative decision, dwelt in the minds of the

statesmen who prepared with no untimely haste for the struggle which impended, although no eye had yet noted from which quarter the cause of offence was to proceed; and their provident judgment was vindicated at Sebastopol.

And so soon as the ramparts of the Russian fortress sunk into shapeless mounds beneath the 'feu d'enfer' of the Allies, and when a peace was granted to Russia which the exhaustion of her powers demanded from humanity, as well as from a sound and generous policy, England withdrew spontaneously from the scene of her triumphs so nobly won, leaving a brighter memory to watch above the graves of her soldiers sleeping in honour beside the storm-swept Euxine, than any which mythic poet has associated with legend of boldest adventure in that land of old fable.

But, though the army of England had returned with fresh renown, Peace found her people dissatisfied with the results obtained from their costly and uncompensated exertions. They were dissatisfied with a concession of maritime supremacy which the nation judged needless, and they viewed with suspicion the express desire of the representatives of the Great Powers to deal severely with the political press of the Continent; and though Europe accepted the tidings of peace with partial contentment, yet it was not forgotten that no solid progress had been made in adjusting questions of mightiest import to the European commonwealth. The close of the last war had, in 1815, united princes and peoples in one common feeling of congratulation at the overthrow of him who was foe alike to palace, to castle, and to cottage. But now in too many states the sovereign felt that an ally had been humbled; while his people thought, that to the successor of one who had been ruler of the monarchs of Europe, too large a measure of impunity had been vouchsafed.

Thus the peace found princes and subjects no nearer recoucilement than in 1848; it found the European mind unsettled by the agitations of a brief though intense struggle; it found governments yet more prone to rely on material force for internal rule than heretofore, and a subtle system of priestcraft again adopted into the resources of administration. An uneasy and ill-defined dread of change possessed the nations drifting without guidance into a perilous future; an illdefined dread not yet exchanged for tranquil hope.

Again, in the aspect of European society, are moral portents of a strange and awful significance. For the first time Europe has witnessed, on the great scale, changes almost Asiatic in their suddenness; and although the hurricane has subsided, the wrecks still welter on the tide. The reverses and