| Regular troops. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff, | 3,826 | ||
| Cavalry, | 58,932 | ||
| Infantry, &c., | 301,224 | ||
| Artillery, | 30,166 | ||
| Engineers, | 8,727 | ||
| Pontoon train, &c., | 5,755 | ||
| Total, | 408,630 | ||
| Garde Nationale. | |||
| 82 | battalions | of 1500 men, | 123,000 |
| 2378 | do. | of 1000 men, | 2,378,000 |
| 2,501,000 | |||
| Of whom 2,000,000 are armed with firelocks. | |||
| To the above are to be added:— | |||
| Garde Nationale of Paris, | 129,800 | ||
| Total, | 2,630,800 | ||
| Together, more than three millions of trained men! | |||
We need not dwell on the disproportion which is apparent here; indeed, our whole task is one from which we would most willingly have been held excused. It is not pleasant either to note or to reiterate the undoubted fact of our weakness; and yet what help is there, when purblind demagogues are allowed by senseless clamour to drown the accents of a voice still speaking to us from the verge of the grave? Let Sir Francis Head illustrate this point, and may his words sink deep in the heart of an unwise generation.
"Why, we ask, have the Duke of Wellington's repeated prayers, supplications, admonitions, and warnings "to various Administrations," and through the press to the British people, been so utterly disregarded? Without offering one word of adulation—we have personally no reason to do so—we cannot but observe, that no problem in science, no theory, important or unimportant, has ever been more, thoroughly investigated than the character of the Duke of Wellington by his fellow-countrymen.
"During the spring and summer of his life, the attention of the British nation followed consecutively each movement of his career in India, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, the Low Countries, France, and latterly in the senate. In the autumn of his life, the secret springs which had caused his principal military movements, as well as his diplomatic arrangements, were unveiled by the publication of despatches, letters, and notes, official as well as private, which without palliation or comment developed the reasons,—naked as they were born,—upon which he had acted, on the spur of the moment, in the various predicaments in which he had been placed. In the winter of his life, bent by age, but with faculties matured rather than impaired by time, it has been his well-known practice, almost at the striking of the clock, to appear in his place in the House of Lords, ready not only to give any reasonable explanations that might be required of him, but to disclose his opinions and divulge his counsel on subjects of the highest importance. Every word he has uttered in public has been recorded; many of his private observations have been repeated; his answers to applications of every sort have usually appeared in print; even his "F.M." epigrammatic notes to tradesmen and others, almost as rapidly as they were written, have not only been published, but in one or two instances have actually been sold by auction. Wherever he walks, rides, or travels, he is observed; in short, there never has existed in any country a public servant whose conduct throughout his whole life has been more scrupulously watched, or whose sayings and doings have by himself been more guilelessly submitted to investigation. The result has been that monuments and inscriptions in various parts of London, of the United Kingdom, and throughout our colonial empire, testify the opinion entertained in his favour; and yet although in the Royal Palace, in both Houses of Parliament, at public meetings, and in private society, every opportunity seems to be taken to express unbounded confidence in his military judgment, sagacity, experience, integrity and simplicity of character, yet in our Legislature, in the Queen's Government, as well as throughout the country, there has for many years existed, and there still exists, an anomaly which foreigners observe with utter astonishment, and which history will not fail to record—viz., that his opinion of the defenceless state of Great Britain has, by statesmen, and by a nation who almost pride themselves on their total ignorance of the requirements of war, been utterly disregarded!"
We have but little space left for further comment. We do not consider it necessary to follow Sir Francis Head through almost any portion of his masterly details, or to sketch, even in outline, the picture which he has drawn of the possible consequences of our supineness. On these points the book must speak for itself. We venture to think that it will not be without some effect, however it may be assailed by vulgar abuse, or depreciated by contemptible flippancy. It speaks home to the feelings of Englishmen, has the merit of great perspicuity, and deals prominently with facts which can neither be gainsaid nor denied.
Even to the apostles of peace—the fanatics, as we think, of the present age—Sir Francis holds out the olive branch. He represents to them, what they probably cannot see, that the only method of realising their cherished idea of voluntary arbitration and reduction of armaments, is by maintaining at a crisis like the present the true balance of power. And certainly he is right, if there be anything at all in their scheme. For our own part, we hold it to be absolutely and entirely chimerical. It is a mere phase or fiction of that wretched notion of cosmopolitanism, which some years ago was preached by Cobden—a notion to which the events and experiences of each successive month have given the practical lie, and which never could have been hatched except in the addled brain of some ignorant and vainglorious egotist. By herself, Britain must stand or fall. The good and the evil she has done—the influence which she has exerted, one way or the other, over the destinies of the human race, is written in the everlasting chronicle; and her fate is in the hand of Him who raises or crushes empires. What trials we may have to undergo—what calamities to suffer—what moral triumphs to achieve—are known to Omnipotence alone. But as a high rank in the scale of nations has been given us, let us, at all events, be true to ourselves, in so far as human prudence and manly foresight can avail. Let us not, for the sake of miserable mammon—or, still worse, for the crude theories of a pragmatical upstart—imperil the large liberties which have been left to us, as the best legacy of our forefathers. Our duty is to uphold, by all the means in our power, the honour and the integrity of our native land: nor dare we hope for the blessing or the countenance of the all-controlling Power, one moment after we have proved ourselves false to the country which gave us birth.
[THE POPISH PARTITION OF ENGLAND.]
If a religious Revolution consists in a powerful change in the religious feelings of a country, then are we at this moment in the midst of a religious Revolution! If a spirit of ardour suddenly starting forth in a period of apathy, if public zeal superseding public indifference, and if popular fidelity to a great forgotten cause, pledging itself to make that cause national once more, exhibit an approach to a miracle, then there has been made on the mind of England an impression not born of man. But if those high interpositions have always had a purpose worthy of the source from which they descend, we must regard the present change of the general mind as only a precaution against some mighty peril of England, or a preparation for some comprehensive and continued triumph of principle in Europe. That England is a tolerant country has never been questioned. Though the whole frame of its constitution is actually founded on the supremacy of the sovereign, and, of course, on the derivation of ecclesiastical power, as well as of every other, from the throne; though therefore the high appointments of the Church have been vested in the Crown, and the subordination of the great body of the clergy has necessarily connected them with the throne, the principle of toleration shapes all things. The ecclesiastical constitution excludes all violence to other disciplines; allows every division of religious opinion to take its own way; and even suffers Popery, with all its hostility, to take its own way—to have its churches and chapels, its public services, its discipline, and all the formalities, however alien and obnoxious, which it deems important to its existence.
None familiar with the history of Popery can doubt that its principle is directly the reverse—that it tolerates no other religion; that it suffers no other religious constitution; that where the tree of Popery lifts its trunk and spreads its branches, all freedom of opinion withers within its shade.