Duke of Wellington, long before the Crimean | Downing Street, assists the process of obliwar. The tale of deficiencies, and obstruc- vion. The Minister of War does not long tions, and want of system, is a very old one. remain the same. There have been seven Every time there has been a disturbance of within the last ten years, giving an average peace abroad, the English people have of seventeen months to each. The plans of turned uneasily to look whether their rulers one man are seldom carried out energetically had guaranteed them against the danger of by his successor. One Minister prefers the a sudden surprise. Again and again the cry Militia, and the Militia bask in a brief sunof alarm has come up to Westminster and shine of official favour. The next man prehas forced, even upon the most economical fers the Volunteers, and a totally new direcfinanciers, at least an ostensible compliance tion is given to departmental activity. The with the popular demand. Fortresses have third Minister is a great believer in the Rebeen built, new arms ordered, new services serve, and a bran new set of plans is devised organised, countless schemes of army reform and commenced, to give force to his predidiscussed, investigated, reported upon, and lections. The fourth Minister looks upon all shelved; and, amid the din of apparent pre- forces principally with a view to cut them paration, the nation has dozed off into an- down; and accordingly the successive reother period of acquiescence, in the full con- forms of his predecessors are consigned to fidence that its rulers were at last awakened, the impartial pigeon-holes, where the chiland that its safety was assured. When the dren of so many busy brains sleep side by period of danger comes round again, and side. Meanwhile, other forces hostile to public attention is again turned to the sub- military reform regain their power. It beject of national defence, it is disheartening comes clear that if certain measures are to find a general agreement that our condi- taken-say, a reform in the selection of offition is very nearly as bad as it was before. cers-influential personages will be affrontOur forces are still insufficient when com- ed; and no Ministry can afford to dispense pared, not with what they have been in with the support of influential personages. times past, but with what our antagonists Another set of measures-say, the construcmight bring into the field against us. Such tion of fortifications-offends the crotchets as they are, they are destitute of adequate of a certain section of the Ministerial party : training, unused to act together in large and these, combining with the regular Oppomasses, wholly unprovided with the auxiliary sition, form a phalanx in the face of which services which are essential to their efficiency the Ministry must either risk a damaging in a campaign. The artillery-the great in- defeat or consent to mutilate its measure. strument of Prussian success-is with us Then there is the steady, passionless, unflagscanty in numbers; and as the pattern of ging pressure of the Chancellor of the Exguns is not yet finally determined, the sup- chequer of the day. His reputation-no ply, both to troops and fortresses, is natur- matter who he is-depends upon the reducally inadequate. Above all, we lack a suffi- tion of the Estimates; and each succeeding cient establishment of highly-instructed offi- Chancellor requires a fresh reduction, in cers, which are the informing spirit of an order to make a new reputation. Nor can effective army. his colleagues afford to disregard him. Unless the nation happens to be in a crisis of alarm, finance is the topic which tells at the elections. Great and comprehensive measures of army reform may be very good things; but Ministers must live. Bloated armaments may be endured, while the nation's feelings are high strung by sympathy or fear; but the events which excite the popular imagination pass away, and the taxgatherer remains. Some department must be made to furnish the materials for a reduction of taxation; and there is none that has so few friends as the War Office. However sagacious a military plan may be that is devised in time of national excitement, its merits, when the danger has gone by, will all be forgotten, in comparison with the advantages of buying dried fruits or Memel timber a little cheaper.

The truth is, that though much solicitude has been expressed upon these subjects in past times, the attention of the nation has never been directed to the question long enough to secure the adoption of adequate precautions: and, except when the nation is excited, the natural working of our political institutions is to make any systematic preparation very difficult. The impulse of a panic soon spends itself. The nation cannot long maintain the tension of feeling which is necessary to make a strong impression upon Parliament. The exciting cause passes away. Popular feeling is diverted to other matters; and Members of Parliament, having volubly given pledges of the required tenor and earnestness, are satisfied with the performance of that formality, and dismiss the subject from their minds. The perpetual change, which is the normal condition of

It is not likely, under these circumstances,

that any English Minister will attempt to emulate the searching military reforms which the King of Prussia has undertaken during the last ten years, still less that he will succeed in doing so. An ardent patriot-a novice, perhaps, in parliamentary disappointments-might cherish the illusion that a Government in possession of a large majority ought to devise some measure which should make the country secure from invasion, and put an end to the "rôle d'effacement" which, under the mockery of our illwishers, we are compelled to play. But the sobering realities of parliamentary governinent, as at present practised, would soon dispel his dreams. The calculations of the anxious whip, enumerating the remonstrances he has received and the votes that he fears must be noted as 'shaky,' the noisy objections of commercial constituencies against increased expenditures, the quieter but not less telling pressure of vested interests and personal susceptibilities, will soon convince him that in proportion as his proposals are effective they will be found impossible. If he does not appreciate this truth from the private warnings he receives, he will soon learn it when he comes into a Parliamentary discussion. Not speedily for the process is a very weary one-but most effectually his proposals will be reduced, by successive operations, to that caput mortuum which gives no hold to objectors and combines no enemies against it. When he has cut out everything that may offend influential persons or discontented cliques, and everything which may interfere with the reductions contemplated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is welcome to cherish the fragments that remain; and when they are sanctioned, and he is reflecting upon their sorry contrast with the statesmanlike measure on which his heart had been originally set, some eddy in the political firmament will probably waft him from office, and he will leave the remnants of his policy to be silently buried by his successor. Is it wonderful that, under these conditions, but scanty traces of coherence or systematic design are to be discovered in our military reforms? Is it not natural that, on the contrary, they are full of beginnings without endings? of fine conceptions issuing in patchwork? of abortive revolutions and unfinished novelties? Could any plan be better devised for producing the minimum of result at the maximum of cost? When we read of the manifold defects attributed to our present military condition, our feeling is that the sum of all the worst of them is less than the consequences which such a chaos of ad

ministrative arrangement might be expected to yield.

The material is good; the organisation which comes down to us from better times has merits of its own. The broad general fault to be charged against our Army is that it has not grown. While others have been advancing, we have been nearly standing still. It was a good army-perhaps the first of armies-at the beginning of the century, when the policy of Government was more permanent, and the House of Commons, from its constitution, was less fickle. But the virtues of that day are not sufficient for the exigencies of this. The progress of mechanical science-especially of locomotive science has made demands upon military organisation which the Governments of other countries have been labouring to satisfy. Time to prepare for danger is an indulgence on which now no people has a right to count. A nation must not only be strong-it must be ready. It must have at command an organisation able, at the shortest possible notice, to throw its whole strength into a single blow. A number of skeleton services, which could be expanded into a genuine army by recruiting and training, during the first few months of a war, was a sufficient preparation for war in our fathers' time; and more was justly denounced as a needless burden. Such a state of preparation now simply represents a profitless expenditure. Long before the recruits could be gathered, or the training given, the war, for good or for evil, would have been decided. An adequate army, not necessarily kept upon a war footing, but sufficiently trained and supplied in all its branches to take the field in three weeks, is now a simple condition of national safety. The want has been recognised for years past by military men, and the failure to supply it is not due to any national hesitation. There is no deficiency. of money, or men, or organising brains, or, if the popular verdict were fairly challenged, of popular support. It is our political machinery which fails. Unrivalled as an instrument for enfeebling the arm of Government, and therefore hindering an excess of executive interference, it has prevented the oppressions into which the zeal of Continental bureaus constantly betrays them. It satisfies the most imperious want of a free people, which is to be let alone. It is not ineffective for purposes of mere destruction, especially when it is driven by the forces of sectarian animosity. But in matters where it is necessary that Government should govern and create, it lamentably breaks down. All the virtues that are attributed to it-in many respects justly—for

the concerns of peace, make it helpless for the purposes of war.

The

the authority which is to judge and may dismiss them, is not largely composed of those who desire to succeed them. decisions of the House of Commons upon the question who is to rule the country is something between a judgment and a scramble. Numbers of those who take part in it hope to benefit by its results. It is not in any sense an impartial decision. It does not turn, as far as the mass of the House is concerned, upon the question which is nominally before it. Nor is this the worst. The best portion-the trained official portion-of the House practically neutralises itself, and has little share in the verdicts that are given. The fact that the largest portion of it is divided into two parties, who vote steadily for their chiefs, leaves a vast power to those whose allegiance is not so trustworthy; and the decisions of the whole body largely reflect the fickleness, the narrowness, the less worthy motives, of those whose mobility practically gives them a casting vote.

It is commonly assumed that these deficiencies are a necessary incident of freedom: that we cannot have executive vigour and consistency of policy, without sacrificing something of the liberties on which we have prided ourselves so long. If it were so, our case would be indeed an evil one; for we should have to choose between enjoying a precarious freedom on the sufferance of the foreigner and securing our safety by the surrender of that which makes national existence precious. But the assumption is utterly groundless. Freedom does not require an unstable policy and a precarious Government. There are free countries, as we may see in the case of America, where the Government is stable, and the policy consequently consistent. There are despotic countries, as we have seen in the case of France, where a sustained and far-seeing policy is impossible. The fault of our English system is that, with a dynasty absolutely secure, it artificially imitates the vices of a throne mined by revolution and conscious of hourly danger. The rights of the throne have, during the present reign, lain practically in abeyance; and, however little it may conform to constitutional usage to say so, the Cabinet is, almost without any reserve at all, the ruling power in England. The peculiarity, therefore, of the English constitution, as it at present works, is that the ruling power has no rights at all. Its official existence is as much at the mercy of its master, the House of Commons, as that of the vizier of an Eastern Sultan. The ruling power in France, as has been already said, is held by a tenure not exceeding that of an ordinary farm-lease. But the ruling power in England has not even the six months' notice accorded to the poorest tenant-at-will. It is not even entitled to the month's warning of a livery servant. It can these, and a handful of other eccentricities be, and has been, dismissed unexpectedly who defy classification, constitute the misupon the spot. It may be said that this is cellaneous mass out of which the Governthe fate of all Ministers, whether they serve ment whip has, on any critical division, to despot, President, or House of Commons. construct his majority. Save in the rare The English Prime Minister is not more cases (as in the last two years) where some liable to dismissal than the Minister of great popular cry has lifted the Minister Prussia, or the Secretary of State in Ameri- above dependence on his adherents, these ca. But the cases are not parallel. These are the judges on whom his fate depends. Ministers are not the ruling power. There In their hands it lies to continue him in is always above them a supreme authority-power, or by a single vote to reduce him to no matter by what title he holds, whether a private station. They alone are open to by election or by inheritance-who does influence, to persuasion, to manipulation, not depend for his official existence upon the nightly caprices of a popular assembly. And, at least, the Ministers of other constitutions have the satisfaction of feeling hat, if they are liable to instant dismissal,

There are exceptional periods when an Opposition is patriotic, and does not hamper Ministers or intrigue with their discontented adherents. But, as a rule, the votes of the mass on both sides of the House can be predicted on every question upon which the opinion of the leading Minister is known. The vote of the Opposition and the steady Ministerialists is foregone; and unless the balance between them be exceptionally unequal, the power of converting a majority into a minority, and consequently the decision of the House, lies in the hands of a motley body of outsiders. The extreme men in politics, the religious brigades who subordinate political questions entirely to their ecclesiastical views, the disciples of small Utopian schools, the neglected men who are yet open to overtures, the superseded men whose wrath is past appeasing

and therefore they alone are the object of Parliamentary strategy. It is of no use to attempt to influence the constant Opposition; and since the Reform Act of 1832 no Liberal Minister has ever commanded for

fathers knew and loved; it may be a fatal | rangements, and on the strength of their logideterioration; or it may, as is more probable, cal excellence they endured for many years. mingle improvement in some spheres of Go- They failed because the middle class itself vernment with obvious loss in others. But, was not fitted for such a part. It is not a whatever its merits, it is so unlike that which class militant; it has no internal cohesionhas gone before that any reading of the fu- no consciousness of unity to enable it to ture by the light of the past would be delu- maintain a political predominance. Its vicsive. And there is no part of the functions tories have been due to the alliance of a disof Government in which its success is more contented lower class, and their faults have problematical than those which concern disappeared as soon as its allies thought fit the attitude of the nation towards foreign to help themselves. The revolution of 1832 Powers. was, therefore, in its ultimate results, a democratic revolution, though its earlier form was transitional and incomplete. This form was productive of great advantages for the time: indeed, for some years it might be said, without exaggeration, that the accidental equilibrium of political forces which it had produced presented the highest ideal of internal government the world had hitherto seen. But it was not the less provisional on that account. The forces by which political organisms are destroyed were, for the time, balanced by influences which still lingered, and were, therefore, neutralised. But these were increasing, and the others were decaying, and the balance could not last for any length of time. It has now been finally upset, and we have now fully reached the phase of political transformation to which the revolution of 1832 logically led.

The change which came over the Government of this nation under the legislation of 1832, and which was confirmed by that of 1867, was a change in essence. The old names remained. There were still three estates of the realm. The King still sat upon his throne; the Lords Spiritual and Temporal still exercised a right of legislation nominally co-ordinate with that of the Commons. But under this apparent identity of forms an entire change in the substance of the Constitution had taken place: it had ceased to be an aristocratic Government. The full effects of the change did not manifest themselves at once; for the men who had been trained under the old Constitution still worked the new one, and the classes upon whom power had for the first time descended were slow to shake off the deference which the habit of many centuries had taught them. No revolution, even among the most fickle races, shows its full effects till the generation disciplined to the old traditions has passed away, least of all among a people so phlegmatic and so averse to change as the English. If our Conservative party had been true to its principles, the period of transition might have outlasted the lifetime of the present generation. But the collapse of 1866-67-antedated though it was by accidental causes-was the logical corollary and inevitable sequence of the revolution of 1832. The provisional aristocracy which Lord Grey attempted to create out of the trading and manufacturing classes had in it no element of permanence. They were too timid heartily to resist the assaults of the lower classes, too jealous of their old antagonists to combine cordially with the upper. In both France and England efforts were made by theoretical politicians to find in the supremacy of the middle class a compromise between the government of caste and the government of numbers. It seemed, on the one hand, to escape feudal domination, with which the philosophy of the age had quarrelled; on the other, to avoid trusting the destiny of the nation to the ignorance and passion of unchecked democracy. In theory, nothing seemed more plausible than such ar

To say that our present state is democratic, is to indicate only a very small part of the novelty or the difficulties of our position. We are democratic under conditions under which democracy was never tried before. This is true in respect to the magnitude of the United Kingdom and the density of its population. The democracies which have hitherto existed in the world, with more or less success, have either extended over small areas, or over territories where the supply of land has been infinite in comparison with the population. In that respect we are trying a perfectly new experiment, the issue of which it is impossible to predict. But these conditions are in their nature unalterable, and we must bear the result of them as best we may. They are not the only nor the most important novelty in our democratic experiment. No other democracy has ever worked with so dependent an Executive. The forms of party government as established here, which give to the House of Commons the most complete and minute control over the Executive, were never devised for a democratic government. They sprang up in times when the Crown nominated a large number of the members of the House of Commons, and a still larger number were nominated by aristocratic families much under the influence of the Crown, and whose natural faults would