But neither Louis-Philippe nor his Government entertains the remotest idea of disturbing the peace of the world;—and it is madness—it in wickedness on the part of the public journals and of pamphleteers to write for the very purpose of creating an impression that an invasion by the French is imminent.
A terrible panic has been raised throughout the length and breadth of the land;—and with sorrow do we record the fact that the Duke of Wellington has placed himself at the head of the alarmists!
To consummate the folly, all that is now required is—what?
To give Prince Albert the command of the Army!
----Or rather, O Englishmen! does not the apprehension of danger from an invasion by a foreign power lay bare, in all its nakedness, the monstrous folly—the astounding absurdity of suddenly elevating that young and inexperienced man to the rank of a Field-Marshal?
A Field-Marshal, who has never smelt powder save in the heartless, inhuman cruelty of a battue of game,—and who has never in his life seen a shot fired in anger!
England does not require such a Drawing-Room Field-Marshal: she wants a Captain-General who, if need be, can compete with such a man as Bugeaud.
But where will Royal Folly stop?—and when will any statesman have the courage to resist the childish caprices of the Queen?
In the same newspapers which are constantly telling us that the French meditate an invasion—that if the Cuirassiers enter London on the east, the best thing the Horse-Guards can do, will be to march out on the west—that the conquerors will be sure to levy contributions upon us, demand the settlement of old scores, strip us of our colonies, and humiliate us in every way,—in the very same journals which tell us all this, we read that the Queen it anxious for Prince Albert to become Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Wellington retiring to make room for him!
Merciful heavens! is such a monstrous absurdity to be consummated? Is that grey-headed veteran, who won the field of Waterloo, to be superseded by a mere boy? Much as we have disliked the Duke of Wellington as a politician, yet we have felt proud of him as our national hero;—and no words can convey an idea of the disgust with which we perused the paragraph intimating that this mighty warrior was to be put upon the shelf, to make way for a Prince who knows no more of military matters than he does of the hieroglyphics on the Pyramids of Egypt.