choice or compulsion or the changing condition of political events, a possible enemy) such as Kiel, the prize of the Danish war; or Jahde, in the sinuous recesses of which a whole navy might float unsuspected and secure; or Antwerp, which was once described as a pistol held at the head of England; or Cherbourg, which, during the whole campaign of last year and amidst all the catastrophes of the time, remained one of the great centres of French power. It is formidable, too, to remember that, whilst we must be prepared to resist a landing at every point, an invader has his choice not only of a multitude of small and undefended harbours where stores and artillery could be conveniently disembarked and secured, but of no inconsiderable range of open beach where local circumstances would enable him to cover with the heavy guns of his ironclads-heavier than any artillery which we could probably bring to bear the landing of his troops, and thence to move them into tenable positions for subsequent operations.

And, assuming a landing once effected, who can doubt its tremendous consequences? Even, if ultimately unsuccessful, it would break the spell and prestige of insular security, it would shake our commercial credit to its centre, it would entail upon us for the future a far heavier burden of military defence than the country now bears to contemplate. But to conceive the results of a successful invasion, the defeat of our troops, the incalculable but fruitless sacrifices, the march on London, and the helpless prostration of the country, is a task in which no effort of imagination could probably approach the real facts. The author of the Battle of Dorking,' with all his singular power of description, wisely leaves this part of the national calamity in cloudy outline. The fall of Paris, the crushing weight of requisitions and indemnities, the annihilation of public life which we have witnessed in France, would probably be beggared by the collapse of internal trade and external commerce, and the final break-up of all the elements of our old and artificial society. Heavily weighted in the race of commercial competition; consuming with improvidence the resources on which much of that commerce depends; loved by none, envied by many; with enormous wealth to tempt, and with little power to defend; undermined by a pauperism that is growing up by the side of and in deadly contrast to our riches; with power passing from the class which had been used to rule and to face political dangers, and which had brought the nation with honour unsullied through former struggles, into the hands of the lower classes, uneducated, untrained to the use of political rights, and swayed by demagogues, we talk as if Providence had ordained that our Government

Government should always borrow at 3 per cent., and that trade must come to us, because we live in a foggy little island set in a boisterous sea.

But the danger which we would fain signal is not confined to the risk which must always attend upon actual military weakness. It is seriously complicated by the estimate which is formed of us by our neighbours; for in international relations the foreign and the military policies are so connected that it is hard to consider the one to the exclusion of the other. We believe that for many years our foreign policy has failed to conciliate respect, and has even contributed to swell a body of opinion unfavourable to us. It would be an ungrateful task to analyse that opinion; but no one familiar with the governments and nations of the Continent can pretend that it is a flattering one. It is probably a mixture of dislike and surprise, and-by far the most serious -ever growing contempt. We are in a great measure an enigma to our neighbours. They recognise our extraordinary resources, they observe our lavish expenditure in military matters, they remember that we have in former times fought well, and that even recently in the Crimea, in India, in Abyssinia, amidst much official mismanagement and error, there are traces of the old fire. But they also see the periodical panics through which we pass, the paltry preparations, immediately succeeded by still more paltry economies, the transparent fallacies of the Government, and the equal willingness of the people to be deceived. Fortunately the moral lectures, in which our Foreign Ministers once indulged, and in which, it must be added, the British people took no small pleasure, have ceased. Our utter military helplessness probably made their continuance impossible. But, however offensive, they were less dangerous. The arrogant tone of self-righteousness in which they were couched implied at least some latent reserve of power, and, corresponding to a certain extent with the then more evenly balanced condition of the European Commonwealth, they were calculated to impose on the imagination. But now, in Continental phraseology, we are 'effaced' from the roll of great powers, and it is not only known that we have no means of fighting, but it is thought that we will not fight. Nor can we complain of it as unreasonable if foreigners enquire whether those who showed such unmistakeable reluctance to support Savoy and Denmark, and Luxembourg and Turkey, would be very eager to compromise themselves on behalf of Switzerland, or Holland, or Belgium. We wish that we could think that we have exaggerated the feeling of foreign nations as regards England. The evidence is wanting only to those who will not see it. In conversation, in

the

the Press, from the chairs of Professors, in the significant attitude of foreign Governments, in the unhappily still more significant attitude of our own Ministers we may observe how wide a chasm yawns between the England of to-day and of former times. But if any doubt of our real position lingered in the minds of foreign politicians, it must have been effectually dispelled by the ingenuous and absolutely unparalleled disavowal by the Prime Minister of Mr. Odo Russell, when engaged at Versailles on one of the most delicate and difficult of modern negotiations. Of all the blunders of an infelicitous Session none has exceeded this; and, were it not written down past recall, we should hesitate to think that a Prime Minister could have been found with so little worldly wisdom as to make the declaration, or a Parliament seemingly so dull to the old instincts of the country as to acquiesce in it.

It is, then, these or rather a succession of mistakes such as these-that have gradually brought England into discredit, and which constitute an actual and very serious element of danger. Danger-because great nations, in their contempt for us, may easily presume too far upon our acquiescence in insult, and may, without intending it, provoke us into a war for which we are entirely unprepared. Danger again-because the smaller nations, who formerly looked to us as a natural friend and protector, now learn to distrust our promises and our power of assistance, and are compelled to form other arrangements in their own interests. Meanwhile, though on every exchange and moneymarket men are hurrying back with feverish zest to the speculations which recent hostilities had suspended, the political horizon looks at least doubtful. To say nothing of the conspiracies against society and property, which are barely kept down by the strong hand of military force, the war-clouds still hang over France, and all Europe has learnt a lesson of sword-law which many years of peace and commerce cannot unteach. Every continental nation, from Russia to Egypt, is passing its population through military discipline, and is assuming the character of a vast standing camp; whilst one of the chief apostles of Positivism in this country-though it must be owned that the doctrine, both in itself and in the language in which it is clothed, sounds singular on his lips-does not scruple to warn us that the tremendous drama of which we have been spectators is only the opening scene of one much larger and more terrible, and that the English people take but a 'schoolboy view' of the subject.

In all this there is a formidable concurrence of opinion and facts, which might teach prudent men to set their house in order before the night comes, when no one may work; but in a time and country when the art of government has become a hand-toVol. 131.-No. 262. mouth

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mouth traffic in Radical votes, this is precisely the course most distateful to our democratic reformers. They object to reconstitute the army on a sound basis, lest they should create a power antagonistic to themselves. They are like the French Republicans, who will not accept the principle of the sovereign will of the people, unless that will is expressed in the form of a republic; or some of their own political connection* in England, who, though anxious to cripple are afraid to abolish the House of Lords, lest its members should find their way into the Lower House, and so strengthen the Conservative forces in that body. Their sense of fairness and patriotism is fortunately not shared by the great body of their countrymen ; but unhappily there are a considerable number who deceive themselves into the honest belief that our position as a great trading country must be a neutral and, even if involved in war, a defensive one. But amidst the many lessons of last year, they might have learned that the profession of neutrality is not less odious to the belligerents than its practice is difficult. The elastic jurisprudence of the conquering side allows, as its actual interests lay claim to, an amount of 'benevolence' or 'sympathy' which must soon render the assumption of neutrality as dangerous as it is held to be contemptible. Nor is the difficulty lessened by substituting the favourite term of 'non-intervention' for that of neutrality. In many, perhaps in most, circumstances, non-intervention is possible and wise, but as a fixed and uniform rule of policy it is inapplicable to this or to any other great country. Short as is the public memory on these subjects, it would be well to remember how largely the untempered assertion of peace doctrines and the deputation of amiable enthusiasts to the Emperor Nicholas contributed to the Crimean war; and, feeble as is the general sense of national obligations, it cannot be wholly put out of sight, by those who pretend to take part in the government of England, that we are still bound by treaties and engagements which we cannot keep without the support of material force, and which we cannot evade without signal discredit. It need hardly be added that the supposition that our insular position must necessarily give a purely defensive character to our military operations is, if possible, still more illusory. Such a theory is too shallow to impose upon the soldier, or statesman, or historian. Offensive and defensive operations are only relative terms; and a bombardment of Copenhagen in 1801, or the passage of the Ticino in 1859, though invested with the semblance of aggressive war, may be in the truest and strictest sense only measures of defence.

There is not here the space to review the melancholy history of the so-called Army Bill, or to discuss the principles upon * See "Times" Report of a Meeting as to the House of Lords.' August, 1871.

which our national defences should or may be reconstituted. Nor is there now the time to analyse and apportion the blame of the discreditable failures in our military legislation of last Session. The Prime Minister has sought to fasten on the Opposition a charge of obstruction, through an undue exercise of those powers of discussion which the rules of Parliament have hitherto sanctioned. They might not unfairly retort that he, for the first time, has enforced upon his supporters an abstention from debate, which is at least equally destructive of the old Parliamentary system. If the one practice is licence, the other cannot be liberty: and where a Prime Minister has shown tact, an Opposition has not generally been wanting in forbearance. But in truth these recriminations are of a very secondary nature, and all the more that whatever blame has been cast upon members of the Opposition for the length of their criticisms, no one has ventured to find fault with the subject matter of those speeches. We must look somewhat deeper for the causes of recent mismanagement; and we fear that, apart from temporary and exceptional circumstances in the House of Commons, the blame must be mainly, though unequally, divided between the country and the Government. It would be as distasteful as it would be unfair in such a case to draw an indictment against a whole nation; but it is also impossible to acquit the English people of all responsibility. They, or at least that part which is allowed to assume the right of speaking for them, have ostentatiously passed from the extreme of panic to that of indifference, thereby in a great measure condoning the errors of the Government. That these persons should be only a part, or even a small minority, of the nation, and that they should be led away by ignorant enthusiasm, by the theories of the economists, or by the unscrupu lous objections of stump-orators, is no excuse for that more solid and sensible portion of the community who here, as in America, laugh at the transparent fallacies of deceivers and deceived, but who have not the moral courage to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of those who claim to represent them. They can escape neither the responsibility nor the penalty. Nor, again, even if we regret it, can we blind ourselves to the fact that the English character has, in its readiness for war, undergone a marked change. From the Conquest at least down to the memory of living men the English were essentially a warlike race. From earliest childhood every man was bred up in a soldier's training. The great Statute of Winchester,' by which he was formed and equipped for war, passed in the reign of Edward I. and reenacted in that of Henry VIII., represented not more the legislation of the ruling class than the temper of the people; and, whatever their defects may have been, that same people during 2 N 2

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the