Such are the proposals which Cobden and his clique—we are sorry to observe a gentleman like Sir William Molesworth among them—are prepared to resist to the last. They want no defences at all. They are opposed to any augmentation of the army. They would rather do without it, or reduce the establishment so as to make the national saving equivalent to the diminished amount of revenue consequent upon their commercial experiments. They look upon free-trade as a universal panacea which is to cure all national and social ailments, and to remedy every grievance. War is to be no more—territorial aggressions unknown—and the advent of the millennium is to be typified by an unbounded exportation of calico!
These are the views which have been lately propounded at Manchester, and the parties are therefore at issue. Cobden has matched himself against Wellington, and Quaker Bright has volunteered to be his bottle-holder. We really wish that it had been permitted us to approach the argument without mingling with it any asperity. But this is now totally out of the question. The disgusting and vulgar language which Mr Cobden has thought fit to use towards the greatest historical character of the age—the low-minded scurrility which pervades the whole of his egotistical discourse,—put him beyond the pale of conventional courtesy, or even of dignified rebuke. The man who could stand up in his place—no matter what audience was before him—stigmatise the Duke of Wellington as being in his old age a whetter and fomenter of discord, and finally insinuate dotage as the only intelligible excuse, deserves, if there is a spark of national feeling left, to be publicly pilloried throughout Britain. "Would it not," says this disloyal prater, "have been a better employment for him to have been preaching forgiveness for, and oblivion of the past, than in reviving the recollection of Toulon, Paris, and Waterloo?" Forgiveness! and for what? For having vindicated the rights of the nations, terminated the insatiable career of Napoleon's rapine, and restored to us that peace which he is still desirous to preserve by maintaining Britain invulnerable, secure, and free!
But let us pass from a matter so deeply discreditable both to the speaker, and to the audience that applauded his sentiments. Meanly as we think of the latter, we are yet to believe that the next morning brought to many some feelings of compunction and of shame. Not so the former, who, wrapped up in the panoply of his own ridiculous conceit, a would-be Gracchus, must remain a Thersites for ever.
Irrespective of the purse argument, which, as a matter of course, is the chief motive of these gentry, the free-traders attempt to brand the Duke of Wellington with a charge of attempting to raise a hostile feeling between this country and the continental states. The accusation is as false as it is frivolous. The attitude of Britain is not, and never will be, aggressive. She is at this moment in the proud position of the mighty mediator of Europe; and it is to her strong right arm, and not to her powers of producing calico, that she owes that ascendency. Our interest clearly and incontestibly is to maintain peace, but that we cannot hope to maintain, if we abandon the power to enforce it. Among nations as among individuals, the weak cannot hope to prosper in active competition with the strong—nay, they are even in a worse position, because the law will protect individuals, whilst to nations there exists no common Court of Appeal. If we are content to renounce our position, and to give up our foreign possessions—a consummation which the free-trade theorists appear abundantly to desire—if we are to confine ourselves simply to our insular boundaries, and advertise as the workshop of the world—then, indeed, we shall surrender our supremacy, and with it the hope of maintaining peace. Can these men read no lessons from history? Does the sight of what is daily acting around them justify their anticipations of a millennium? What is the real state of the fact? Russia, having absorbed Poland, is now engaged in a territorial war with the Circassians, upon which she has already expended an enormous amount of treasure and of men; and she is prepared for a double sacrifice, if by such means she can gain possession of the passes which are the keys to southern Asia. Austria is hanging upon the skirts of Italy, concentrating her forces upon the frontier, and menacing an immediate invasion. Very lamb-like and pacific has been the conduct of America to Mexico. As for the French, whom Cobden eulogises as the most "affectionate and domesticated race on the face of the earth"—did the man ever hear of the Revolution?—they are notoriously the most aggressive of all the European nations. Did domestic feelings excite them to the conquest of Algeria? Did affection lead them to Tahiti? Was it a mania for free-trade that brought about the Montpensier marriage? Really it is difficult to know for which palm, that of ignorance or effrontery, this Manchester manufacturer is contending. Has he forgot the Joinville letter, which was hailed with such rapture on the other side of the Channel? Was Paris fortified without a purpose? Is he blind to the fact that the peace of Europe at this moment depends upon the life of a man now in his seventy-fifth year? We maintain that there never was a period, at least within our recollection, when the maintenance of general tranquillity throughout Europe was more precarious. And yet, this is the very moment which Mr Cobden selects for a crusade, or rather a tirade, against our military establishments!
Our feelings are any thing but those of dislike towards the "affectionate and domesticated" French. We admire their genius, and read their novels,—and we have a peculiar affection for their wine. In one point alone we agree with Mr Cobden. We still retain the ancient Caledonian predilection for claret in competition with port, and we should be sorry to be deprived of champagne. Still sorrier should we be to lose our annual spring trip to Paris; to be banished from the Boulevards and the Palais Royal, and to enjoy only in memory those delicious dinners at the Rocher de Cancale. We have no wish to run the risk of a compulsory detention at Verdun. Nay, we shall go further, and apprise Mr Cobden, that had our lot been cast a few centuries back, we should in all probability have been fervent maintainers of the ancient bond of alliance between King Achaius of Scotland and the Emperor Charlemagne; and nothing would have given us greater pleasure than to have visited Manchester along with a few thousand lads who swore by Saint Andrew, whilst the partisans of Denis were amusing themselves in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth. But times have changed. We have contracted an alliance with the nation of which Mr Cobden is so creditable a representative; and upon the whole, we are not altogether dissatisfied with the arrangement. We can now look upon the French with an eye undimmed by affection; and we must confess that we have very little, if any, faith in that marvellous change of their character which is sworn to by the Manchester spouters. They may be very excellent fellows, but we would rather not trust them with our keys. The tone and temper of a nation do not alter quite so rapidly as Mr Cobden seems to suppose. The history of Algeria is a very significant hint that the old ideas of the French on the score of conquest are not yet wholly obliterated; and we should rather imagine that they have not quite forgotten their pristine appetite for plunder. They deserve, however, considerable credit for the dexterous manner in which they have thrown dust into the eyes of Mr Cobden. You would think, to hear the man, that he is an inoculated Frenchman. Presume to criticise their character, and his scream is like that of a railway engine. Just hint that you consider them unscrupulous, and our calico-printer overboils "with horror and shame and indignation." We have no doubt that he considers it a great pity that history cannot be annihilated—that is, supposing he has ever condescended to notice any thing so trivial as history. Will he not favour the world with a new version of the French Revolution? We are anxious to hear his grounds for supposing the French to be an "affectionate and domestic people;" and since we are, to fraternise with them altogether, it would be comfortable to know our brethren as they really are. We want to have a true account of the Noyades. Were these really wholesale drownings, or a mere ebullition of national fun? Doubtless, there is much humour—though we have not yet been able to see it—in the clanking of the guillotine; and the expeditions to Moscow and Madrid, with their accompanying tales of rapine and butchery, may possibly be demonstrated by Mr Cobden as instances of a practical joke. Davoust, as the Hamburgians know, was a fine fellow; and so, upon examination, may prove Robespierre and Marat. Perhaps, too, he will come down a little later, and tell us the particulars of the gallant and gentleman-like behaviour of M. Dupetit-Thouars towards Queen Pomare. Or will he undertake to prove that Abd-el-Kader is an infamous scoundrel, utterly beyond the pale or security of national faith and of plighted honour?
It is plain, either that Mr Cobden has been egregiously humbugged by the acute foreigners, or that he has subsided into a state of calm, settled, and imperturbable idiocy. It is too cruel in Bright to parade in such a way his former friend and master, and to quote from his private correspondence. We wonder what is Sir Robert Peel's present opinion of the man whom he chose to bespatter with his praise, and for whose sake he was content to forfeit the elaborate reputation of a life-time. But bad as Cobden may be, he is fairly surpassed in Gallic enthusiasm by the notorious George Thompson, whose patriotism may be gathered from the tone of the following paragraph:—"Why, what were the toasts given at the sixty reform banquets of France? This has been one of their toasts at least, 'Fraternity, liberty, equality.' Let us echo from these shores the shouts that have been raised there, and I am sorry to say, stifled, so far as Paris is concerned, for the banquet did not come off there. Let us send back the echo, fraternity, liberty, equality!" And this pestilential raving has been applauded to the echo in Manchester.
Let us have peace with the French by all means, and with all the world beside; but let us not fall into the despicable and stupid blunder of supposing that human passion and human prejudice, the lust for power, and the cravings of ambition, can ever be eradicated by any system of commercial arrangement. Britain is naturally an object of envy to all the continental states. It is her strength and position which have hitherto maintained the balance of power—and of that the European states are fully and painfully aware. Every step which can tend to weaken the fidelity of her colonies, is regarded with intense interest abroad, and more especially in France. The people of that country envy us for our wealth, and dislike us for our power; and war with Britain, could the French afford it, would at any time find a host of advocates. We are not believers in the probability of such an event, if we keep ourselves reasonably prepared; but the very first relaxation upon our part would inevitably tend to accelerate it. It is quite possible that France may yet have to undergo another dynastic convulsion. The death of Louis Philippe may be the signal for intestine disorder. The Count of Paris is a mere boy, and popularity is not on the side of his uncle and guardian. A powerful party still exists, acknowledging no king save the rightful heir of St Louis; and the fanatical republican section is still strong and virulent. These are things which it would be imprudent to disregard, and of which no man living can venture to predict the result. The death of the Queen of Spain would, according to all appearances, give rise to a rupture with France, and possibly test, within a shorter period than we could have believed, the sufficiency of our national defences. There is at this moment every reason why our real strength and power should be made apparent to the world, and our weakness, where it does exist, immediately remedied and repaired.
Had the Duke of Wellington proposed, like Friar Bacon in Greene's old play,
"To girt fair England with a wall of brass,"
the outcry could not have been greater. An iron wall might perhaps have been rather popular in the mining districts. But his Grace proposes no such thing. He only suggests the propriety of a small augmentation of the regular forces at home, the strengthening of our neglected fortifications, and the gradual reimbodiment of the militia. It is for the British nation, or rather its representatives, to adopt or reject the proposal. Now, it is worth while that we should keep in mind what is our actual disposable force at present.