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 wẹ 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 2 N 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 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 unscrupulous 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 the the not inglorious rule of Plantagenets and Tudors, as has been truly said, generally thought first of England and afterwards of themselves. To this indeed succeeded a period during which every man, if he was not a soldier, had at least so many of a soldier's instincts that it grew into an article of the national faith —irrational perhaps, but not wholly without advantage—that an Englishman might accept with confidence any odds that the fortune of war might array against him. It was this spirit on the part of the people which supported the steady policy of an aristocratic government, and which carried the country with success and honour through some very dark and trying hours of national history. Now, for the first time, a change is evident. The making of money, the increase of social comforts, the almost exaggerated sanctity set upon human life, seem in a great measure to have absorbed the rougher qualities, and with them the hitherto incalculable reserve of fighting power in the nation. Doubt at least now exists where once there was no room for it, men are perplexed by the conflict of seeming duties, and an irresolution-which in principle may not be immoral, but which politically is very mischievous-is the result. How far the country at large is answerable for this it is unnecessary here to inquire. Perhaps no class or party is free from responsibility, though the Free-trade school, the political economists, and a very large proportion of the Radical section have unquestionably given the main impulse to it. But, after all, the chief blame must rest with the present Government. If the country has been perplexed, the Government have only given them unmeaning platitudes, instead of a distinct scheme of military organisation; if the country has been apathetic, the Government, whose duty it was to guide others, have eagerly sheltered themselves behind that apathy. They have, in truth, never been in earnest; their heart has been wandering far away in very different fields of political activity or pastime, and throughout last autumn and winter, whilst everyone watched with feverish anxiety the chances of foreign complication, they seemed as if only intent upon discouraging each rising impulse of national self-defence. Nor when the time came for explaining their policy in Parliament were they more fortuTheir utterances were vague, and their legislation combined the double demerit of being empirical and partisan. It was empirical in sweeping away, together with the anomalies of the Purchase system, its equally certain advantages without providing any equivalent or substitute for the arrangements that gave us young officers, and that saved us from the stagnation which exists in our own non-purchase corps, and which is found to be inconvenient even in the highly-trained Prussian service. It nate. was was empirical in adopting a wholesale principle of selection, instead of, as now, a combination of seniority, selection, and purchase, with no safeguards upon the political jobbing which must either exist, or be suspected to exist, in a Parliamentary Army. It was empirical in placing upon the public finances a heavy and practically unestimated charge, in order to accomplish a result which, after all, must be pronounced to be one of very doubtful policy. On the other hand, it was partisan in its unprecedented exercise of the Prerogative; it was partisan in the temper and attitude displayed; and it has even received a still more partisan complexion from a subsequent speech made by Mr. Gladstone, in which he is reported to have said that, wealth which is concentrated in London, had taken desperate offence because the Government had recommended that power in the English Army should no longer be the prize of wealth, but the reward of merit.' It is unnecessary to comment on such an extraordinary remark. We only note it with regret, as an illustration of the difficulty of securing a fair discussion of this question, when the Prime Minister himself, in the quiet atmosphere of a country meeting, and long after the close of Parliamentary controversy, can condescend to such an argument. But whilst Government and People must, though in different degrees, share the responsibility of our present condition, it is also clear that the system under which our army is administered is in some essential respects accountable. When armies and military resources were comparatively small, when campaigns were protracted, and when the Government of England, being more aristocratic in its character, was more under the influence of a consistent and traditional practice, army administration was conducted without practical inconvenience and in harmony with Parliamentary institutions. We are now attempting-if, indeed, the laissez aller fashion in which these political problems are allowed to work themselves out deserves the name of an attempt to administer an army of regular troops, volunteers and militia under conditions which exist in no other country in Europe. Our War Ministers are generally civilians, ignorant of the requirements and capabilities of an army, unfamiliar even with its technicalities and terminology, and almost invariably selected for Parliamentary qualifications, independent of military experience or ability. Their short tenure of office, which does not much exceed an average of two years, and the overpowering business of the House of Commons, from which-to make the difficulty even more hopeless-they are generally selected, make it almost necessary that they should be either timid or rash or blind instruments in the hands of the permanent and professional authorities on whom they must lean for guidance. To these difficulties |