tions that need enter into a practical consideration of our coming policy?

Thirdly, however, wise men will probably be of opinion that we shall better secure our safety, in case we should ever have to struggle for existence or for empire, by reserving our strength rather than by wasting it in anticipation in maintaining an influence which is costly, embarrassing, and exhausting, and in securing allies who may fail us in the time of need. The millions and the men that we have squandered and may yet squander by meddling in purely Continental controversies, and what is called "asserting our position" as a first-class European Power, if properly hoarded and properly applied, would have gone far to render us invulnerable. If we did not scent danger so far ahead, and take such elaborate and costly, and often clumsy, precautions to forestall it, we should often be far more strong and ready to meet it when it comes. But after all, perhaps, the strongest plea in favor of withdrawing from our old habit of active and systematic interference in European complications is to be found in the consideration that we are never sure of doing good. The only thing certain about these interventions is their cost and their bloodshed-their exhausting operations and their residual animosities: the success and the benefit are and have been nearly always problematic. If we look back with the tranquil sentiments and the reflected light which belong to history upon the earlier portion of the last seventy years, he must be a bold man who will pronounce with confidence that the world would have been worse off now had we let matters alone that more wrong would have been done and more misery endured that progress would have been more retarded or civilization further advanced. And if we could estimate recent events with the same knowledge and impartiality, our verdict as to the interventions of the last thirty years would probably be much the same. Our interference in the affairs of France in 1793, the commencement of twenty-two years of desolating warfare and accumulated debt, is now generally recognized to have been a mistake. We did not, as we fancied we easily and speedily should do, put down the insurgent na

tion: we only developed and concentrated its revolutionary energy. We did not, as we hoped, protect England by that war from the contagion of democratic theory and passion: the scenes and deeds of 1794 and 1795 would have done that for us had we left their example to operate alone; but by the line we took we created in the heart of our own Parliament and people a party, almost anti-national, who, in their detestation of the minister who had involved us in the war, were goaded to espouse the cause, to endorse the doctrines, and to defend the excesses of the enemy. But for that fatal error of Mr. Pitt, and the passions it aroused, we might have had Parliamentary Reform and all its issues forty years at least before we had. By that war, then, we neither did good nor gained glory; but we shed much blood, we squandered much treasure, we laid up many heavy burdens for the future. How was it with regard to the Napoleonic wars? Latterly no doubt it became almost a struggle for existence, when the Emperor had grown to hate us as his one irreconcilable and unvanquishable enemy; but suppose that we had accepted him, as the French accepted him in 1799, as the legitimate, because the chosen sovereign of a great nation, and had confined ourselves strictly and avowedly to a policy of self-defence. Napoleon would scarcely then have attacked us voluntarily; for we should not have thwarted his military ambition, and he would have been too wise to bring upon himself an unnecessary foe. Supposing then our opposition to have been withdrawn, would his career have been more triumphant, more iniquitous, more desolating than it was? Is it at all certain that it would even have been shorter? In spite of us he subjugated nearly the entire Continent. In spite of us he defeated Russia, conquered Italy, absorbed a great part of Germany, annexed Belgium, twice utterly routed and prostrated both Austria and Prussia, placed members of his own family on the thrones of Holland, Naples, Westphalia, and Spain,

in a word, appropriated about half Europe, and made France incomparably more powerful and formidable than she had ever been before. Why did he fall at last? Not because English troops

England could have done much to control or to dethrone him.

beat his generals in the fields of the Peninsula; not because English gold subsidized his enemies; but because his mad- Since the fall of Napoleon our contidened, insatiable ambition, which we nental interventions have been nearly all had striven to keep within bounds, at in the pacific direction; but which of last overleaped the limits of sanity, and them can we look back to with unmininvolved him in a struggle with the gled satisfaction? Are we proud of the might of nature; because his incessant morality, or confident in the beneficence wars had exhausted both the life and the of the Treaties of Vienna? We tore endurance of his country; and because away Norway from Denmark in order to his oppressions and his outrages had compensate Russia's robbery of Finland. aroused in all the lands he had trodden How far did that iniquity contribute to down that inextinguishable hatred which the ruin of Denmark, in spite of us, in only waited for the turning point of 1864? We gave Lombardy and Vefickle fortune to pay back the long debt netia to Austria: to what extent, by of treasured vengeance. It was the that error or misdeed, did we not make Russian campaign, and not the Spanish ourselves responsible for the long miswar that decided Napoleon's fate. Had eries and oppressions which Italy sufhe never attempted that frantic enter- fered at the combined hands of the prise he would not have been forced to Hapsburgs and the Bourbons? We meet the combined forces of the three created Greece, and gave her an unfitmilitary Continental Powers-if at all-ting constitution and an imbecile king: with young and untrained recruits. The have we had reason to be proud of our veteran army that perished in the snows creation, or to call it good? We sepaof 1812 would probably have continued rated Belgium from Holland, and guaras before more than a match for any anteed our work; is it not even now troops that could be brought against doubted by the shrewdest of our statesthem; the allies of 1813 would not have men whether that severance was not a dared to rise against their conqueror; political blunder? And is there any and Napoleon would have been able to doubt at all that that guarantee is pregturn his whole strength and his personal nant with embarassments for us in the genius and presence to meet Wellington future. Of our ignoble meddlings with in Spain. Who can say with confidence the Polish and the Danish questions it that our army, with its miserable allies, is safest not to speak; but what shall we would not then have been utterly over- say as to "the Eastern question?" Has matched, and that a dragging war or a our action done good--real and permacompromising peace would not have left nent good-there? We, in common the Emperor as secure as ever on his with most liberals and with many lovers throne? What we contributed to his of peace, thought in 1854 that the case downfall-a contribution which cost us for intervention was a strong and clear nearly half our present debt-was that one. The great body of the nation went by our subsidies we helped the Conti- heartily into the war. What do we nental Powers to continue and renew think and say now? Are we as confifrom time to time a contest which must dent as we were that our decision was a have been exhausting, and that at a crit- right one and that our interposition was ical period we detained some of his best practically beneficent? Have not grave generals and most veteran troops at a misgivings beset us ever since, and are distance from the scene where the life- they not daily growing stronger, whether and-death struggle was carried on. No in sober truth all our efforts to keep the Turdoubt the battle of Leipsic might have kish empire on its legs are not simply had a different issue had the armies of pouring water into a sieve? Whether it Soult and Massena been on the field. is worth keeping alive? Whether it can But after the retreat from Russia, what- be kept alive? Looking to our anteceever had been the immediate course of dent action, to distinct or implied enevents, Napoleon was either doomed or gagements, to our traditional policy, to crippled; and but for that disaster it is the preliminary steps we had been led to very questionable if the utmost efforts of take, it is not easy to see how the war

of 1854, could in 1854 have been avoided; | proportion to the magnitude of our combut the question is, did we truly benefit mercial transactions. We have seen that Europe or truly save Turkey by that war? Is the saving of Turkey a benefit to Europe? We know what the Crimean War cost us: can we say as positively what it gained us? And if in a case like that, where our interests, our honor, and our traditions were so closely involved, we can feel already in doubt whether our intervention was wise and useful, or not altogether an honest and generous mistake,--what is likely to be our verdict in more ambiguous cases? In plain truth, the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of foreseeing the ultimate results of political action is the strongest conceivable argument against all action that is not distinctly forced upon us. To do right, or to do good, one may venture much and labor much; but to feel that what we do with the best intentions and after the most singleminded deliberation may turn out to be a mischief and a blunder, is enough to paralyze the action of the most virtuous and courageous among statesmen.

There is yet another class of considerations, pointing in the same direction, which it may not be very agreeable to dilate upon, but which it would be simply foolish to ignore. The relative position of Great Britain to the other Powers of Europe, singly or in their aggregate, is no longer what it was fifty or sixty years ago. We are still no doubt the richest nation in the world; but we are no longer as decidedly and disproportionately so as we once were. France treads very closely on our heels; since the accession of the present Emperor, it is questionable whether her wealth and commerce have not increased at a faster rate than ours. Italy wants nothing but security, and Russia, Austria, and Spain, want nothing but that adoption of a sounder commercial and financial policy of which they have already given indications, to develop and accumulate resources which will amaze even themselves. Again, our commercial marine, our commercial depôts, our commercial opulence, are still far ahead of those of other nations, though France and America approach us nearer than of yore; but we have lately had startling warnings that our commercial vulnerability is exactly in

the smallest navy can make fearful havoc with the greatest commerce; and that under the altered circumstances of the time no navy is adequate to the protection of a foreign trade that extends over the world, and sends its ships by thousands into every sea. The days of convoys are gone by: they never were very efficient, and no commerce now could wait for them. Alabamas and Sumters may start up anywhere; and Royal Sovereigns and Warriors can not be everywhere, and too often, like London policemen, would be nowhere. Thus in one sense, and a terribly practical sense, our superior wealth is the measure, not so much of our superior strength as of our superior vulnerability. We should suffer more than any other nation by a war, just because our merchants are more enterprising, more wide-spread, more magnificent in their operations than those of neighboring states, and because our wealth is more dependent on our mercantile transactions. Our enemies would have more to prey upon, and a wider surface to attack. If, indeed, we could induce our benighted rulers and our chief rivals to adopt the proposed doctrine of the absolute inviolability of private property at sea (when not contraband of war), our position would become incomparably safer and more powerful; but we fear that the latter are now too wide-awake and the former still too shrouded in antiquated fancies, to allow us to hope for such a result.

But further, our war-navy, we may at once assume or admit, is still the largest and mightiest in the world. There are alarmists and there are frondeurs. who tell us we are mistaken in this idea, and that the efficiency of our marine defences is by no means so certain, either absolutely or relatively, as we fancy; and many of their allegations have an uncomfortable air of plausibility. But we will, for the sake of argument, put their representations aside, and take the satisfactory statements of the Duke of Somerset and Lord Clarence Paget as our guide. But granting all they say, the residual fact is undeniableour superiority at sea is nothing like what it was in the period of our great Europe

an wars.

In those days we had actually no formidable rival. The chief navies were those of France and Spain: no others, except perhaps for a time those of Holland and Denmark, were worth naming. We had little difficulty in defeating and almost destroying the combined navies of both our antagonists; and after Trafalgar, England was undisputed mistress of the seas. Let us forswear all vain boasting and illusions: she is no longer, and probably can never be so again. Steam has told greatly for her in one way, inasmuch as her coal-fields, her engineers, and her machine shops are the first in the world. But it has told still more against her in another way, inasmuch as it has neutralized what probably was the great source of her superiority, her special seamanship. The resources of mechanical science are open to all nations, almost at last as unreservedly as to ourselves and the greatly increased degree in which science enters now into naval warfare also tells against what used to be one of our special advantages-the superior dash and courage, the fondness for hand-to-hand fighting, the predilection for boarding, which distinguished our sailors and led to so many of their victories, will be comparatively unavailable in future.

course, is in a measure inconclusive, because we can not give the real effective warlike capacity of the different ships—a matter which depends upon their armament and the success of their various modes of construction, which has yet to be decided. But at the end of 1863, England had afloat or in preparation 669 vessels, of which 566 were steam and 103 effective sailing ships; France 489, of which 367 were steam; Russia 310, of which 248 were steamers. The number of officers and seamen were in England (excluding marines) in 1864, 50,000; in France 39,000; in Russia 59,000. The entire number of seamen at once available in case of emergency would in England be 100,000, and in France 66,500. The entire naval estimates in Great Britain for 1864 reached £11,600,000, and in France £6,000,000. There is another element, too, to be taken into consideration: we have now a new naval competitor and possible enemy to reckon for. The warmarine of America has hitherto been comparatively insignificant; it will henceforth be very formidable. She has already 640 vessels of one class or another afloat, and will have upwards of 700 by the termination of the war. Nearly all of these are steamships, and some of them of a very efficient and singular construction. AlThe new armaments, the fearful guns ready, therefore, there are three nations, which will henceforth be in vogue, have the combined navies of any two of which done away with the days of battering would be stronger than ours, and any one broadsides, and "laying your ship along- of which might give us much trouble. side of the enemy," the tactics which Do not let us fall into the error of unNelson loved. 66 Boarding" is probably derrating the strength of our competiat an end for ever, and superiority in guns tors. War, be it said in passing, is a difand gunnery, not in courage or in obsti- ferent thing from what it was, and to a nacy, will decide naval combats for the certain extent a new thing. The confuture. quest of Russia in the Crimean war taskBut in what degree is our navy still pre-ed the efforts of the two greatest Eurodominant in strength? In an almost immeasurably less degree than formerly. Our commerce is greater than that of any two other European nations. Our outlying dependencies are more extensive than those of all other European nations put together. Even by the admission of the Emperor of the French, our navy, in order to be equal to that of France, ought to be double. Nay, it ought to be that even if we were merely a European Power, since our army is so much smaller than that of Continental States. Now Again, our military requirements are what are the facts? The comparison, of greater than they were. The habitual

pean powers, though she was taken at a disadvantage by being assaulted at the extreme point of her European territory. The slaughter and the cost of that short conflict were till then unexampled. They have been twice surpassed since. One campaign and two battles in the north of Italy proved at least relatively more expensive and more sanguinary; and the blood and treasure squandered in America have outstripped all previous examples.