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    she has promised to them their full share . $ fe are approaching a redistribution of the inap of Europe arranged as it was at the last general congress by a coterie of decorated gamblers , ignorant alike of nations and of natural boundaries , for the benefit of the ruling class at the expense of every people on the Continent . Constitutional freedom and

    national independence might almost be dictated by the alliance at the suggestion of England . It would be so , if we could secure worthy representatives of the country which has obtained for itself Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights—those great standards of our own freedom , from which however , we ourselves have drifted backwards .

    The consequences at home would not be leBS signal than those abroad . To maintain the position of England on the Continent , we need a redevelopment of our military system . To render that system efficient we require a reform of its constitution . By the combination of families whose hereditary connexion renders them a kind of volunteer corporation , the command of the army has in the main been retained for the aristocracy . There is one qualification : by the system of

    purchasing , commissions are retained exclusively for the rich . The results of the system are seen in the disasters of the Crimea . The custom has prevented even the aristocracy from attaining that distinction in chivalrous service , which at former times they have so signally achieved . The failure of the campaign has rendered peremptory a demand for a reform ; the demand is a new test to the patriotism and power of all classes . Will the aristocracy-and the wealthier classes

    consent to a reform wjiich will destroy then ? monopoly ? We scarcely believe it j we anticipate that the demand for reform will be blunted and staved off by a compromise . If the middle and popular classes were effectively represented , this question of opening the commissions of the army to the ranks , and therefore to all classes—to the poor aristocracy and the middle and working classes—would be grappled with and settled . Besides openng the army to other classes , the effect of the reform would be to bring that great instrument of

    power more closely into connexion with the nation , and-so to diminish .. a _ too . exclusive connexion of the soldiery with the Executive Government , with the Crown , and with the incorporated families . Unhappily , the antimilitary disqualification of the most powerful of the popular representatives precludes them from effecting a reform which would rescue one-half of our constitution from decay . Apart of the reform required for rendering the army

    efficient , and sustaining it by a reserve , as the Duke of Wellington desired , would be , to develop our militia ; but that would be to neutralise the executive power . We have no belief that Temples , or RuSsells , will call a truly national army into existence . The members of a national party would do so , but our popular members have committed themselves against the militia , which they consider to interfere with " business . " Sustained

    by'a truly national force , the members of a national party would develop the power of the entire community by exercising that power on tho broadest field with the grandest results and the largest benefits for all classes of mankind . Alas ! our popular members , who stand in lieu of the loaders of such a national party ,

    have put themselves out of office by identifying themselves with the narrowest chimeras . A place is open for such men as HampdeiSj Xbkton , or CitoMWjsiiii ; but to take advantage of that opportunity for restoring official influence , either the National party must send up new ra , en , or it must induce the men already at its head to lay aside their crotchets , and grapple with the world as they find it .

    The National Party itself , if it can be said to exist , has-sought distinctive existence mainly by resistance to the late Ministry ; as if a negative and antagonistic mission could ever suffice for the birthright of a National Party ! No ; we require men who can fetch the arms of the British constitution out of the museum in which they have been suffered to rust , and use them vigorously in the service of mankind , to retrieve the honour arid power of their class and of their country . There is the opportunity ; what we do not yet discover is the man .

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    THE WAR HENCEFORWARD . " ENGLAND , " writes M . Peybat , in his admirable letters from Iiondon to La JPresse , " has constantly laboured to become a great house of business , and she is astonished that she has not become a barrack . " That is the true state of the question , so far as the outburst of public indignation is concerned . We have long boasted that we were the workshop of the world . So exclusively have we become that , and nothing else , that when we are called upon to devote our energies to something higher—the maintenance of public law and national potency- ^ -we find that we have long ago parted with the means of executing our intentions and fulfilling our duties . A great war for public right found us with regiments instead of an army ; with brave fighting men , but no machinery to sustain them in the camp and in the field . We care nothing for the break-down of the Abeedeeist Cabinet .

    The fate of a Coalition is nothing to us . With pur military system it matters little whether we exchange a Newcastle for a Gbey , an Aberdeen for a Palmebstoe" ; or whether official England ranges itself under the showy rhetoric of a Debby , and the Oriejatal dictatorship of ari EiiiiENBOBOUGH . Unless the system be changed , it will be only a change of persons . But what we do care for

    is that the severe lesson read to the nation in these latter days shall-not be lost upon the national intelligence ; that in future we shall not forget the interests of the barrack in our eagerness to care for the house of business ; and that we shall not forget that no nation , however successful as a gigantic " firm , " ever sustained its place in the world which did not maintain , with tlie utmost cafe , a highly-discip lined and effectively-organised

    army . The late Ministers had not the courage to turn the Serp entine through the Horse Guards ; they had not the courage to break down that monopoly of promotion which has been the bane of our military system , as much as another monopoly was the bane of commerce . They have failed because the } ' did not grapple with a decrepit system ; because they sought to make war under an incubus of routine and nepotism ;

    not to speak of an absolute want of two great departments of the army—a regular land transit . service , and an educated staff . Their intentions , we believe , were honest , but they had riot the courage to dare , the brain to plan , the hand to execute . The real causes of tho break-down of our system Ho deeper than the faults of an Administration : they arc to be found in that

    deplorable complication or patronage and routine of which , until now , every Administration has been at once the victim , the accomplice , and the slave . Who or what is to blame ? In . the first nlace that spirit in tlie country which pre-Yfcnted any Government from calling out tho militia for so many years ; that spirit which made " peace and retrenchment" a profitable cry , within three years of the signing of tho Treaty of Adrianople ; that spirit which , in later years , tolerated the peace agitations and

    peace congresses set on- foot by the believers in Mr . Cobden arid the Emperor of Russia ; that spirit , in short , which left our army without a reserve , our fleet a fleet only on paper , and the British Government without any unquestionable potency to sustain its voice in the affairs of the world . From the wide dominion of this spirit sprang that temper of the Parliament which made meanness imperative on Governments ; that system of written checks and counter-checks , of divided responsibility and of petrifying routine , that desire to be economical rather than efficient , and those plans

    for preventing abuses , which seldom allowed uses to develop to maturity . This spirit destroyed the fine organisation of the armyand an army organisation once destroyed cannot be renewed in a day . It is to this spirit we trace the littleness of British foreign policy for the last thirty years—the period embracing the reign of the Russian Emperor . And when war became a moral and political necessity , from the dominion of this spirit the country had to be rescued . In consequence , the war found us with , inadequate means , a young and unseasoned army—a mere skeleton of a militia—and no reserve . Had

    half the efforts been made to improve the constitution of the army which were made to destroy it—had the peace party , instead of striving to disarm us , striven to destroy the aristocratic plan of promotion by purchase , which is the blight of our military system , how different would have been the fate of the army of the East . We have always contended against that system of patronage in which the most powerful of our contemp oraries now professes ¦ to see _ _ cause of our disasters . But we did not take up the argument in order to

    serve a political purpose , to fabricate a dark intrigue . We did not take it _ ap as a . good arid safe stone to be flung at particular men , and forgotten when it had done the work of the moment . We asked that the army might be really national , at a period when the Times scouted the notion , and had that demand been complied with , we should not have lacked men , alike robust and intelligent , in this hour of the country ' s need . These are the causes that have brought low the military prestige of England . So much for the past .

    " The wiir uericeforward ! Unless treachery intervene , we are on the eve of the great war which will teat the sinews of the European nations and settle the pretensions of Russia . One by one States cast their lot with one or the other side . Austria meets Prussian hesitation by calling upon the German States to fight and cast their lot with her . Prussia mobilises her troops—for what ? to fight for or against Russia . Sardinian troops

    are assembling on tho shores of the Mediterranean to take ship for the Crimea . A French army is preparing , we are told , to inarch through Switzerland to join the Austrians . Tho states of Europe are marshalling for the fray ; and in this contest England proposes to play a part . Shall it be a great part or a secondary part ? If she would stand conspicuously in the front there must bo no more of that

    chaotic derangement which has brought her army so low , and reduced her military prestige . There must bo an end of deficiencies which shock tho sense of tho nation , - and consume om- soldiers in disease , starvation , and despair . There must bo an end ot nepotism and exclusivism , in patronage and promotion . There must bo no more cryinJ out in Parliament by atatesraen presuming to load thia people , that'Russia is nofc to be humiliated , that her territory is not to bo infringed , that her dignity and consideration are to bo conserved . Whig and Derbvite alike , uttering sentiments like

    Untitled Article

    J Febbuajiy 3 , 1855 . ] THE LEABEE . 109

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 109, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2076/page/13/