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become remote and historical, to be recalled only by some poetic mind from the force of contrast.

"'T is Greece, but living Greece no more."

They for whom she has ceased to care will in turn be profoundly indifferent to her fate, thinking only that it will point afresh the old moral of the great commercial histories of Tyre, and Carthage, and Venice. From the loss of respect to the infliction of humiliation, the transition is neither long nor difficult. The former has not yet quite gone, but the latter has begun; and why should not humiliation be endured? "This wealthy luxurious nation, which is only resolute on one point, that nothing short of downright attack shall compel her to strike a blow-why should one care for her reclamations, her protests, or her protocols? They mean nothing. There is no reason to dread her resentment, because she is too comfortable to resent anything. Of that old, fierce, yet noble indignation which was once so terrible, not a spark survives. She has grown fat and lethargic-eschews as a bore, and bad for digestion, all strong excitement, except of a commercial kind. Yes, she is harmless. She She may be injured, slighted, spat upon. She is no longer to be feared."

A mistake, certainly, according to my view of the matter. A mistake, under existing circumstances, not unlikely to be made, but still a very great mistake, and one which would cause those whom it might tempt too far to pay dearly for their presumption for, at some point in that progressive process of insult, the apparent torpidity which invited it would suddenly disappear. The sensitive nerve would at last feel the sting. Then would it be seen that the might of England was not less than it ever was-that her righteous anger, when once aroused, could still strike awe-that at whatever sacrifice, with disorder perhaps to commerce, disturbance to society, and danger to liberty, which might all have been avoided, but still, at any cost, she could and would vindicate that great law of international justice of which she is an appointed and responsible administrator.

CHAPTER IX.

NATIONAL DEFENCES.

"Narrerò solo quello che T. Livio dice innanzi alla venuta di Francesi in Roma cioé, come uno Marco Cedizio plebeio riferi al Senato avere udito di mezza notte passando per la via nuova, una voce. la quale ammoniva che riferisse MACCHIAVELLI.

ai magistrati come i Francesi venivano a Roma."

"Solon said well to Croesus (when in ostentation he showed him his gold); Sir, if any other come that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold." BACON.

Use of Tools.

As long as evil passions are powerful in the world, such a contingency as that of war cannot be considered impossible, and for a nation like England, the cheapest safeguard against the evils of such a contingency, and the best security for peace, are to be found in the maintenance of armaments, adequate in magnitude, and thoroughly efficient. To this subject it is now a matter of great urgency that the common sense of the nation should be applied. The superiority of England to other nations in industry depends greatly on the prevalence of that habit which has given rise to the maxim, that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing as well as it can be done. If, as we are sometimes told, this old practice of giving the last finish to the work, so that it may wear, and not merely so that it may sell, shall ever disappear, the materials will be all ready for a second GIBBON to surpass the first by a darker and more mournful history. But the maxim has still force, that whatever is to be done should be well done. Let us see how it applies to the present matter. To turn out any piece of

work properly, as, for example, in manufactures, what is required? Two things-good workmen and good tools. These are exactly what are wanted for the effective defence of England; no more, but certainly no less. In these two, however, a great deal is implied.

To begin with the tools. It is evident that the progress of civilization is continually rendering more complicated and expensive the instruments by which the labour of man is assisted. The numbers who hung, day after day, with an interest which seemed to grow by what it fed upon, over the specimens of machinery in the Crystal Palace, saw nothing in those magical creations but tools, intended to give the highest efficiency to human labour. But that which happens with the instruments of peace happens also with the instruments of war. Human invention is continually rendering them more effective for their purpose. Nor is this to be regretted, for the more sweeping and infallible the means of destruction become, the greater will be the reluctance of mankind to resort to the use of them. But this continuous improvement makes it unsafe for one nation to remain behind another in the efficiency of its military tools. Even the Duke of Wellington could not win a battle with the bows and arrows which did such good work in the time of Henry the Fifth, and the muskets of the Peninsula are only fit for the stars and trophies of the Tower armoury, at a time when it may be necessary to face rifles which strike their mark five times as far, and with fifty times the certainty. But this is no point for the dogmatism or disquisition of nonprofessional men. According to Blackstone, it is a sound and ancient maxim of the English law, that each man is to be trusted in his own pursuit. This, then, is a case in which full power, with full responsibility, ought to be given to those who are professionally competent to settle it. There is no one who would not rather act upon the opinion of Sir James Clarke, in a case of consumption, than upon that of the majority of the electors of Westminster; and for precisely the same reason the opinion of Sir John Burgoyne, or Sir Howard Douglas,

upon the equipment of the British army, should outweigh that of the majority of the House of Commons. To such men the decision should be left, and one may hope that under this head some useful reforms are actually in progress. But the dread of criticism upon increased estimates is still strong and prevalent, so that even military men, whose position involves the least civil responsibility, may be dangerously tempted to think more of cheapness than is always consistent with perfection in the workmanship.

Naval Administration.

In passing to the still more important and expensive tools which are required for naval purposes, we are in the sad predicament of finding the naval authorities divided amongst themselves. There must be something desperately wrong in this naval administration to yield results like those that have taken place. Externally it has an old, sleepy, superannuated look. It holds out upon the strength of what was done in its younger and more active days. Whatever was good in the old routine keeps going; but wherever provision has had to be made for new emergencies, the failures have been painfully conspicuous. Of the dispatch of transports, and the state of the victualling department, it is not necessary to speak; but in the whole business of ship-building, the Admiralty has been, to say the least of it, signally unlucky; and there are very strong appearances indeed, in favour of the opinion that the Government would get the work better done by private capitalists than it does in its own dockyards. This, however, is not a point to be decided without more information than the public possesses. But, however it may be decided, it is certain that the Admiralty is now the most important department of the English Government. Internally the people govern themselves, with the help of the newspapers. If in the course of some long night the Home Office, with all its bustle, were to be carried away by the Thames, it would be a considerable

time before the nation at large found any difference from its absence. Even the loss of the Foreign Office would not be without its consolations. And if the opinion of the colonies is to be regarded, consolation is by no means the word to express the feeling with which they would learn the total and irreparable destruction of the department which watches over their welfare. But upon the Admiralty all hangs. Internal peace, security of domestic industry, the regular revolution of that complex machinery of credit whose least disturbance is always wide-spread suffering, the stability of the whole majestic system of English freedom, and the inestimable treasures, intellectual and moral, which have been amassed under its shadeall depend upon the vigilance, energy, and foresight of that department to which the guardianship of the English coast is entrusted.

Admiralty Reform.

Beyond all question that department does require reformradical reform. How the reform should be applied is not so clear to the unprofessional mind, but the results to be aimed at are perfectly clear; and two things, at all events, will seem, to ordinary common sense, to be amongst the means necessary for attaining those results. In the first place, the whole business of preparing the machinery of war, such as ships, should be so far under distinct superintendence and management, that those who are responsible for the management of fleets shall be unbiassed critics of the worth of the tools which are put into their hands. Without some arrangement of this sort there can be no effectual check upon bad workmanship in the dockyards. It is quite true, that means must exist for ensuring perfect unity and subordination in the whole series of labours which are intended to lead to one result; but it is no less true, that as long as the same men, who direct and are responsible for all active naval operations, have also to defend every blunder that may be made in naval architecture, such blunders will

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