What overturned the throne and pacific policy of Louis Philippe?—His determination to keep at peace; his resolution to coerce, at any hazard, the ambitious designs of the Parisian democrats. He tried to be a "Napoleon of Peace," and he lost his throne and died in exile in consequence. What immediately followed the triumph of the Republicans in Paris in February 1848? Was it the reign of universal tranquillity—the advent of peace and good-will among men? Was it not, on the contrary, an outbreak of general hostility—the universal arming of nation against nation, of people against people, of race against race? Did not Republican Piedmont invade Lombardy; and Republican Prussia, Holstein; and Republican France besiege Rome? Did not the Magyar rise up, against the Sclave, and the Bohemian against the Austrian, and the Lombard against both; and was not the frightful scene of almost universal hostility appeased—and that for the time only—by the appalling appearance of a hundred thousand Muscovites on the Hungarian plains? Have not Austria and Prussia for the last six months been on the verge of a dreadful contest? Have not the burghers and ploughmen of all Germany been called from their peaceful avocations, to man the ranks of the landwehr? Have not eight hundred thousand men been arrayed on the opposite sides, and the banks of the Saale crowded with armies paralleled only by those which in 1813 stood on those of the Elbe? And what stopped this dreadful war, and sent back those multitudes of armed citizens unscathed to their peaceful homes? Was it republican France, or popular England? No; it was despotic Russia. It was the presence of a hundred and fifty thousand armed and disciplined Muscovites on the banks of the Vistula, which like a thundercloud overcast the east of Europe, and at last cooled down the ardent ambition of democratic Prussia into something like a just estimate of the chances of the conflict, and a temporary respect for the rights of other nations.

Turn to distant parts of the world, and is the prospect more indicative of the advent of a pacific millennium? Is it to be found among the English colonists in India, or the energetic republicans of America? Have not the English, for the last twenty years, been engaged in almost ceaseless hostilities in Hindostan or China, during which ultimately our victorious standards have been advanced to Cabul and Nankin; and we have seen our empire shaken to its very foundation by the disasters of the Coord Cabul Pass, and the frightful contest on the banks of the Sutlej? Is America more peaceful, and is the advent of the reign of peace foreshadowed by the entire abstinence from ambitious and angry passions in the republicans of its southern or northern hemisphere? Has not the former, since the disastrous era when its revolution began, been the theatre of convulsions so frequent, and bloodshed so incessant, that history, in despair, has ceased to record the names of these conflicts, and points with horror only to their woeful consequences? And has not Northern America, during the last twenty years, exhibited the most unequivocal evidence of the lust of conquest having gained possession of the most influential portions of her inhabitants? Were they not actually at war with us in 1837 to support the Canadian revolutionists; did they not cheat us out of three-fourths of Maine, and bully us out of half of Oregon; and have they not squatted down, without the vestige of a title, on Texas; and when the Mexicans resented the aggression, invaded their territory and wrested from them the half of it, including the whole auriferous region of California? In short, war surrounds us on all sides; its passions are raging throughout the world; an era of such hostile prognostications is scarcely to be found in the annals of mankind. And yet Mr Cobden and Mr Bright declare, to admiring and assenting audiences in Manchester, that the era of war is past, and that we should disband our troops and sell our ships of the line! They are like an insane patient in a distant wing of a building which is wrapped in flames, who positively refuses to do anything to save himself, saying, "They will never reach me."

Has the conduct of the English Government for twenty years past evinced the reality of the alleged disinclination to hostilities which is said to be creeping over all established governments, and to which popular ones in particular are in so remarkable a manner averse? Has not our conduct, on the contrary, even in Europe, been aggressive and provocatory to war in the very highest degree? Did we not unite with France to force a revolutionary government on Spain and Portugal, and to prevent a legitimate one in Belgium from recovering its lawful possessions? Did we not, along with Russia, Prussia, and Austria, throw down the gauntlet, at the time of the bombardment of Beyrout and the siege of Acre, to France; and did not the firmness of Louis Philippe and the accession of Guizot, whom he called to his councils at the critical moment, alone prevent a general and frightful war in Europe? It is well known, to all persons acquainted with the subject, that we were still nearer a war with France some years afterwards, when the affair of Otaheite and Queen Pomare revived the ancient and undying jealousy of the two countries. We know it for a fact, that at that period the French were prepared for, and fully expected instant hostilities; and that for several nights six thousand choice light troops slept armed and accoutred on board the huge war-steamers at Cherbourg, ready to start at daybreak for a descent on the southern shores of Britain, and on some of its undefended dockyards, where not a vestige of preparation had been made to repel them.

But why recur to periods comparatively remote for proofs of a state of things which recur under our present foreign administration as periodically as commercial catastrophes do under our monetary system? In November 1849 we sent Admiral Parker, with the whole Mediterranean fleet, to the mouth of the Dardanelles, and took the Czar by the beard to rescue from his grasp some thousand Hungarian insurgents; and not content with this demonstration—which was as hostile as the anchoring of a Russian fleet off the Nore would have been to this country—he was directed to cast anchor, on his return, off the Piræus, and bid defiance to France and Russia, the guarantees with ourselves of the independence of Greece. On this occasion we were so near a rupture that the French ambassador actually left London, and the Russian one was preparing to follow his example, when an immediate war with the two largest powers of Europe—thus, by unparalleled rashness on our part, brought, for the first time for half a century, to act cordially together—was only prevented by our succumbing and referring the matter to arbitration, as they had all along proposed, instead of exacting it at the cannon's mouth, as we had at first endeavoured to do. And for what mighty national interest was this enormous peril incurred, when, as usual, we were wholly unprepared to meet it? Was it to save Hindostan from invasion, or raise the blockade of the Nore, or extricate our fleet from the grasp of the Czar? No! It was to enforce private claims of M. Pacifico and Mr Finlay on the Greek Government, to the amount of a few thousand pounds—a proceeding which afforded the Continental powers, if they had been as hostilely disposed as our Government, a fair precedent for sending a Russian fleet of thirty ships of the line to the Nore, to demand satisfaction from our Government for the brutal attack on Marshal Haynau! And yet, such is the infatuation produced by party spirit, that not only was this aggressive act approved by a majority of the House of Commons, even after we had been obliged to recede from it, but it was approved by the very men who are constantly preaching up the immediate advent of a pacific millennium, and the necessity of disbanding our troops and selling our ships of the line.

Surrounded then, as we undeniably are, with the flames and the passions of war on every side; slumbering on the edge of a volcano, the fires of which are smouldering under our feet and gathering strength for a fresh and still more terrific explosion; actuated as we are by unbounded national haughtiness, and a most aggressive system of foreign policy, have we done anything to support our pretensions, or avert those ravages from our own shores which we have so liberally scattered on all the adjacent coasts? Have we 100,000 regular troops and 200,000 landwehr, in the British Islands, ready to repel insult; and a fleet of 30 ships of the line and 20 armed steamers, ready afloat and manned, on the German Ocean and in the Channel, to secure our harbours from attack, and raise a blockade of our coasts? Have we—since we are so set upon a foreign war, and have done so much to spread the passions which necessarily lead to it, and made so many hostile demonstrations calculated instantly to induce it—made preparations in our Exchequer and our granaries for its expenses and its privations? Have we, like Frederick the Great when he invaded Silesia, a fund of £7,000,000 in the Treasury, to meet his war expenses; or Napoleon, when he plunged into Russia, a reserve of £14,000,000 in the vaults of the Tuileries? Have we fortified Woolwich, the general arsenal of the empire, and Chatham, and our other naval depots, hitherto undefended? Have we cleared out the glacis of Portsmouth and Plymouth, so as to give free range to the guns of the works, and established a great central fortification at Weedon, or some other central point in England, whither our troops might retire, if obliged to evacuate London, and where the new levies, raised in haste, might receive the elements of discipline, without the risk of being assailed, while yet in the awkward squad state, by the enemies' cuirassiers?

Alas! we have done none of these things. Woolwich is still an open depot, liable to be taken by a single regiment; there is not a bastion at Weedon; there is not a defensible post in the environs of London; Chatham, Sheerness, and Deptford are entirely open on the land side; and although Portsmouth and Plymouth are fortified, and may be pronounced impregnable against a naval assault, they are far from being so against a land force. The enemy would not require to run a sap up to the counter-scarp: we have saved him the trouble, by allowing houses to be built almost everywhere so near the ditch, that the besiegers would effect a lodgment there the first day, and be able to batter in the breach in two days more. Landwehr we have none, unless 30,000 pensioners—most valuable veterans, of great use against mobs, or for garrison service, but little qualified for the field—deserve the name: our yeomanry, though admirably mounted and full of spirit, are wholly unacquainted with the duties, and unaccustomed to the fatigues, of actual warfare. We have not more than seven or eight ships of the line, and these but imperfectly manned, ready for sea in our harbours; and the regular troops in Great Britain, though second to none in the world in discipline and courage, can only muster 37,000 sabres and bayonets, and in the two islands amount only to 61,000!! In proportion to the eagerness with which we have spread abroad the passions and lighted the flames of war in all the adjoining states, is the assiduity with which we have neglected or abandoned our own defences; and the promptitude we have evinced, on every possible occasion, to provoke the hostility or rouse the jealousy of the most powerful states in our neighbourhood can be paralleled only by the simultaneous reductions we have effected in our own armaments, and the utterly defenceless state in which we have exposed ourselves to their attacks. Judging from our internal reductions, one would suppose we were never again to go to war: judging from our foreign policy, one would suppose we were never again to be at peace.

To illustrate these remarks, and demonstrate the utter insanity of our simultaneous adoption of the most aggressive foreign policy and the most pacific internal preparation, we subjoin from Sir Francis Head's late most admirable and interesting work a vidimus of the military force of the principal European powers, as compared with that of Great Britain, and subjoin to it a statement of our naval force, accompanied with that of France, Russia, and the United States—the principal maritime powers of the Continent and America:—

I. France.
Regular troops—
Infantry,301,224
Cavalry,58,932
Artillery,30,166
Engineers, &c.,18,298
408,630
National Guards,2,630,800
II. Russia.
Regular troops—
Infantry,468,000
Cavalry,85,000
Cossacks,20,000
Regulars,573,000
Guns,1,020
Garrisons and reserves,150,000
Cossacks,10,000
160,000
III. Austria (in war.)
Infantry,484,240
Cavalry,54,560
Artillery,26,104
Engineers, &c.,56,549
626,453
In peace reduced to,378,552
Landwehr,200,000
IV. Prussia.
Regulars and Landwehr—
Infantry,265,530
Cavalry,49,662
Artillery,23,400
Engineers, &c.,40,800
379,392
Guns,1,163
Landsturm,222,416
V. Great Britain.
Regulars, infantry, cavalry, and artillery—
In Great Britain,37,845
" Ireland,24,005
" European colonies,7,915
" Asia, (English,)30,467
" America, &c.19,835
" Africa,3,703
123,768
Pensioners,30,000
Dockyards-men,8,000
Yeomanry,13,441
Militia in Channel Islands,4,700
56,141
179,909

—Sir F. Head, p. 5-36.