be the reverse of fickleness or temerity. | character of the House of Commons. They When equality came to be more valued than seem to consider that the fixed principles of it was two centuries ago, such anomalies action and the decisive policy, which each were not likely to endure. But when they man in his own private affairs would consider fell, the system that had grown up out of indispensable to success, are unattainable in them, and was dependent for its value on the government of England as it is now. them, should have been revised at the same They are content to float sleepily down the time. That curious kind of Conservatism, stream, letting it carry them whither it lists, however, which leads us to cling all the more only stretching out a hand now and again to passionately to forms because we have been avoid some obstacle that is close upon them, forced to abandon their substance, prevented or avert some immediate danger. And so any adaptation of the Constitution to the we comfortably drift on, little heeding the new distribution of power. The result is, reckoning that awaits all, nations or men, the Constitution as we have it now, and the who prefer to indulge in the pleasing illuadministrative results that Constitution is sions of the present rather than bear the pain working out. Such a state of things could and discipline of foresight. Some day it never have been enacted. No prudent legis- most come. Our sins of omission accumulator would have proposed to surrender di- late against us while we dream. Our statesrect and complete executive power to a men, in their hearts, knowing the danger of democratic assembly freely elected. No pre- inaction, throw the blame of it on the House cedent for such an arrangement can be found of Commons and 'public opinion;' while the in the history of the world, if we except the public, sensible that England is, administraform of government established by the Na- tively, standing still, while all the world is tional Convention in 1793, which can hardly moving, denounce the feebleness of our be quoted as a salutary example. We have statesmen. not adopted it of set purpose, but we have 'drifted' into it, as into many other national embarrassments, by pure inertness. The evils of it are beginning to show themselves. Such as its origin was, such are its effects. Our administration both in home and foreign affairs tends more and more to the vice of drifting.' The finest vessel must drift if she does not obey her helm. No deliberative assembly, however high its qualities, can be otherwise than vacillating and helpless, unless it will submit to be led. The House of Commons has been developing for some years past a distaste for obedience, even to the leaders of its own choice, which is natural to bodies of heterogeneous composition, but which is fatal to good government. Upon one or two salient questions, on which the feelings of constituencies have been strongly moved, it is sufficiently obsequious. As far as such matters are concerned, it sits as a body of delegates to register the popular decision. But beyond the narrow limits of his special commission, even the most trusted leader appears to be powerless. The power of small independent sections, each in full cry after its own special crotchet, appears to increase, and, as the resultant of their mutually destructive energy, a paler and paler tint is creeping over the whole of our external and domestic policy. Always excepting the special subjects on which the constituencies are excited, the courage of Governments seems to grow feebler-their constructive power to diminish. They give up more in despair to the obstacles which are created by the unruly and disorganised This paralysis of government is the grave danger which the new constitution of 1832 appears to be slowly working out. If it be so, war will test and proclaim it, as it has proclaimed the weaknesses of the French Empire which seemed so strong. Every department of the State feels its effects. The hopeless chaos of our municipal administrationthe misunderstandings which are gradually severing the Colonies from England-the indecision and half-heartedness which, in foreign policy, condemns us to a part which is the ideal neither of the old English nor the new Manchester school, which is neither dignified nor cheap-are all results traceable to the confusion which has arisen from the unfitness of the House of Commons to exercise direct executive power. But of all the evils which are due to this cause, the inefficiency of our defensive preparations is far the gravest. Other matters can wait. The instinct of self-government is so strong in the English people, that we can bear the torpidity of the Home-Office almost without regret. The Colonies are long-suffering, and will probably wait some years yet, while we are making up our minds whether they are to be looked upon as poor relations, or jewels of the Crown. Even in respect to our foreign relations-so far as they do not take the form of war-we can afford, at a slight cost to national susceptibility, to put off the question whether we desire to be looked upon as a European Power or not. But the state of our defences admits of no delay. Whether it be true or not that the Prussian staff are already engaged in discussing the invasion of England, no one can say that war is so improbable a contingency as it was twelve months ago. The lust of conquest has received a terrible impulse, and the pretexts for indulging it will not be wanting. We are bound by numerous guarantees, some of which we have recently renewed. Our destiny is bound up with that of Belgium, and Turkey, and Sweden, unless we are content to proclaim that we are too weak to give effect to our pledged word. The schemes for the absorption of Holland, which Count Bismarck freely discusses, could hardly be realised without goading the English people to resistance. Nor must we count upon the faintheartedness which many of our prominent advisers openly recommend. The same selfdelusion, which now makes the English believe that they are safe, will, when they are provoked, make them believe that they are strong. Their patience will give way at the moment when those who are trading on their supposed pusillanimity least expect it, and, without inquiring into the state of their preparations or the capacity of their leaders, we shall plunge into war. The provocation, which makes this catastrophe inevitable, may come at any moment. Our treaty guarantees, our freedom of speech and consequent frequency of offence, our views of the privileges and the duties of neutrals, all offer so many opportunities of attack. We know not when we may be involved in such a struggle for existence as that which has desolated France. There are signs of an alliance which shall add the vast hosts of Russia to the military Power by which France has been overwhelmed. If such an alliance should take place, the reversal of our traditional Eastern policy cannot fail to be one of its results. If such events be impending, the crisis will be one of the most terrible through which this country has ever passed. But, in any case, the times are past in which constitutional scruples can be allowed to hamper national defences. The House of Commons must, by its own patriotism and self-control, furnish an antidote to the evils which the excess of its power has caused. • Representative institutions are on their trial' was said sixteen years ago, and the verdict then was not very favourable. It is difficult to estimate the danger to social order which will arise, if any great disaster or disgrace shall teach the nation to despise the institutions in which it has been so long taught to trust. We are not sanguine enough to hope that any formal_amelioration in the relations between the Executive and the House of Commons will take place for many years to come. Neither men nor assemblies will yield prerogatives which they have once acquired, ex cept to some power stronger than themselves; and it is only the nation that is strong enough to limit the action of the House of Commons. The Americans, looking at the question antecedently, saw the essential importance of securing that for a fixed period of years the Executive should, save in cases of positive crime, be independent. The actual mechanism that governs us is so hidden beneath the remains of ancient checks and powers, in various stages of decay, that the question of security of tenure' for the Executive is never broadly presented to the popular mind. Some great failure in war will probably happen before the vital necessity of an efficient government is recognised. We must look for a mitigation of present evils, not to any formal change, but to the good sense of Ministers themselves, and of the parties which oppose and follow them in the House of Commons. The great need of the crisis is a military organisation, carefully planned, carried out fearlessly and thoroughly. It will be a deep blot on the fame of any Minister who shall, by any act of concession of his, allow Parliamentary difficulties to mar the fulness of the scheme which he shall judge to be required by exigencies of the national honour. At the present moment, with the fate of France before their eyes, the most wayward House of Commons will shrink from mutilating a complete measure of national armament. The extent to which our preparations should go must depend on the part we mean to bear in the councils of Europe. If we intend to maintain an isolat ed position, regarding the strip of silver sea' as another Atlantic severing us from all concern with the affairs of Europe, it is obvious that we require only defensive armaments. If, on the other hand, we resolve to adhere to our traditions, and to sustain the guarantees to which we are pledged, we must be able, in case of need, to operate upon the Continent with armies having some proportion to those with which modern warfare is carried on. But when we have decided the scale upon which our armaments are to be designed, let us resolve that they shall be complete; that in respect to cavalry, artillery, and the auxiliary services, they shall be ready at a month's notice to take the field: and that no want of training in the troops, or instruction among the officers, shall frustrate the object with which so great sacrifices are incurred. And when the scale of expenditure and the plan of organization have been resolved upon, let us make an effort to give it some character of permanence, to save it from the yearly nibblings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. should gladly welcome the establishment by We law for a term of years of the expenditure] statecraft of our fathers, on the faith that by which our defences are to be maintained. We should hail such a measure as an augury of a better state of things. It would give to us some sort of security that the safety of this country shall no longer be at the mercy of the financial combinations of each succeeding year-that it shall not be liable to be paralysed by any passing caprice of the House of Commons. But if such a law is at present too much to hope for, at least we may look for some understanding between the chiefs of the two great political parties to the effect, that the amount of the military Estimates shall not for a fixed term of years be made the object of Parliamentary manoeu vres. culture and science, and mutual intercommunication, had made wars among civilised nations an impossibility. The year 1870 has taught us what pitiful presumption lay behind the mask of this grand philosophy. We know now that war has lost none of its congeniality to human errors and passionsthat the science which was to have stayed it has but sharpened its weapons and multiplied its horrors-and that, whereas of old it was undertaken with small pretext and paltry result, the pretexts remain now as scanty as ever, but the result is overwhelming desolation. We know that no appearance of peace, however profound, however soothing, is to be trusted. The tempest can burst upon us in a moment from a blue sky, wasting smiling territories and happy populations with the utmost misery that human nature can endure. All this is now placed beyond the reach of speculative objection. It is bare, stern fact. We live in an age of 'blood and iron.' If we mean to escape misery and dishonour, such as that of which we are reading every day, we must trust to no con We confess to a fear that our rulers may not realise the gravity of the crisis, and may fritter away the interval of preparation that yet remains to us in attempts to patch again the patchwork of which our military system consists. A few changes in detail, a little extra expenditure for the year upon this vote or that, will justify them to themselves in assuring us that we are secure against all emergencies. It was precisely the same assu-sciousness of a righteous cause, to no moral rance which the Emperor of the French gave to his Chambers in the spring of 1869. But whatever Ministers, grown old in the art of substituting grandiloquent phrases for solid precautions, may assert, the nation at least cannot be deceived. The great lesson of this war-its one compensation for its unnumbered horrors-is that we must drive out from us the prophets of optimism. For years they have sung to us premature pæans on the progress of humanity; and so confident was their triumph, so overwhelming their contempt for those who still dared to believe that the human race was fallen, that men had come in some degree to listen to them. The new gospel-a compound of commerce and philosophy-was being extensively taught and believed, to the effect that the peace on earth,' which Christianity had been unable to bring about, had been secured by the locomotive and the spinningjenny. We were to lay aside our precautions, and to bury with little honour the influence, to no fancied restraints of civilisation. These bulwarks may be of use to us when the millennium draws near; they are empty verbiage now. We must trust to our own power of self-defence, and to no other earthly aid. Nor let us hope that we can provide the safeguard when the danger comes. We have been taught by the saddest lessons of our neighbour's experiences, that to trust in untrained valour and selfdevotion, however lofty those qualities may be, is the silliest of delusions. If we would be safe, we must call to our aid all the resources that science and discipline have ministered to the art of human destruction. We know now, by experiments worked out upon others, that a large, well-trained, wellsupplied army, is the one condition of national safety. It will be well for us if we suffer no official procrastination, no empty commonplaces about British valour, to leave us to face the coming danger undefended— unprepared. and to Brazil. York, 1871. ART. I.-A Life of Anthony Ashley, First | judge, and all of them together ought not to Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683. By preclude renewed inquiry or appeal, if it can W. D. Christie, Formerly Her Majesty's be shown that they were swayed by prejuMinister to the Argentine Confederation dice or imperfectly acquainted with the facts. 2 vols. London and New In the full and complete Life before us, Mr. Christie has undertaken to show this: to prove that historians, poets, and lawyers, are equally at fault: that Shaftesbury was not a bad man, if an erring one: that his admitted faults and vices were less those of the individual than of the age: that he lived in times when, to persist in an uncompromising course, was as impracticable as to walk straight amongst pitfalls or to keep clear of sunken rocks without tacking: that, whenever he joined or left a party or a cause, he did so because it had assumed fresh colours, He or because a more effective mode of promoting the essential object of good government had broken upon him. THERE are few characters in English history better worth studying than that of Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury. He lived in most momentous times, and he played most important parts in them. He was a Royalist and a Parliamentarian by turns during the Great Rebellion; a kind of half-Cromwellian, with monarchical leanings, under the Commonwealth; a courtier, a patriot, a member of the Cabal, and a fierce exclusionist, under the Restoration. changed sides with an audacity, a rapidity, and an adroitness, that make it difficult, almost impossible, to decide whether he was corrupt or incorrupt, whether he acted upon principle or no-principle, whether he adopted expediency, broad enlightened expediency, for the rule of his public conduct, or, in each successive crisis, simply waited for the tide, which, taken at the flood, leads on to for tune. If his changes had uniformly, or even generally, coincided with his interests or supposed views of personal advancement, there would be little room for doubt; but they did not. Making no allowance for him on this score, historians, poets, and lawyers, have joined in a chorus of reprobation. The brilliant rhetoric of Macaulay, the splendid satire of Dryden, the inexhaustible wit of Butier, the forensic acuteness of Lord Campbell, have been combined against his fame; yet no one of these formidable assailants can be deemed unexceptionable as a witness or a The undertaking was one of no ordinary boldness, and Mr. Christie is no ordinary biographer. Acute, cultivated, zealous, industrious, scrupulously accurate, justly confident in his resources and his views, he possesses (what we recently commended in Sir Henry Bulwer) the marked advantage of a peculiar training for his task. He has held high appointments in the diplomatic service, and he was an active member of the House of Commons for some years. In suggesting that biographers of statesmen will always be the better for some practical acquaintance with public affairs or statesmanship, we are not afraid of incurring the satirical reproof implied in the well-known line 'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.' Shaftesbury himself foresaw that he would. be hardly judged by posterity. Whoever considers the number and the power of the |
