Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle/Chapter 6

by Andrew Bisset

CHAPTER VI.

FREE TRADE AND THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Of the four Free Trade advocates mentioned in the preceding pages, two, General Thompson and Mr. Villiers, were, as far as I know, opposed to the Channel Tunnel; two, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, would seem from the following statement to have been in favour of it.

On the 17th of August, 1883, a general meeting of the Submarine Continental Railway Company was held at the Cannon Street Hotel, to receive a report from the directors, and for special business. Sir E. W. Watkin, the Chairman of the Company, presided. The Chairman said:—

"The Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament to whom Her Majesty's Government referred the question of the Channel Tunnel, have by a majority expressed their opinion against proceeding for the present with legislation."

The Chairman in the course of his remarks said:—

"If any supposed for a moment that they meant to slacken their efforts to attain their object they were very much mistaken. A cause which had the advocacy of the late Prince Consort, of Mr. Cobden, of the Marquis of Lansdowne, of Lord Aberdare, and of John Bright, was a cause which no man need be ashamed to be associated with."

The Chairman also said:—

"There was no doubt that they had succeeded in creating in this country a distinct party of men in favour of the construction of the tunnel, and in addition they had associated the question indissolubly with the name of peace."

It unfortunately sometimes happens that the persons who make most stir with the professed intention of promoting peace, do not adopt the most obvious course to the attainment of that object.

According to this statement of Sir E. W. Watkin, the Channel Tunnel had the advocacy of the late Prince Consort and of Mr. Cobden. If we are to adopt any great undertaking not upon our own knowledge and judgment, but upon the authority of others, those on whose authority we are to act ' should be men whose judgment in great affairs had been often tried and never found wanting; in civil as well as military affairs it should resemble that of the great English general, of whom it has been said that there was but "one human being who was able to mislead that far-sighted and sure-footed judgment."

Now, with all respect for the Prince Consort and for Mr. Cobden, I do not feel myself under any obligation to accept the opinion of the Prince Consort or the opinion of Mr. Cobden, that Sir E. W. Watkin shall efface the insular character of Great Britain and place it in precisely the same relation to France that Germany is. Such a proposal indicates an amount of arrogance and presumtion that reminds us of the extravagant assumptions of an Oriental tyrant or a Roman emperor. Speculating traders think of nothing but filling their pockets. But there are other things to be thought of besides raising the dividends of railway companies, when the price of the rise may be a nation's ruin. A glance at the map will show that if the English Channel be filled up, London will be within an easier distance of Paris than Berlin, and when the cry of "to London" shall arise, as in 1870 the cry "to Berlin" arose, England may not have the good fortune to have such a general as Moltke, and such an army as Moltke had organized.

Whether or not it was the desire and the design of the Prince Consort to plunge England into the Crimean War, I do not presume to say. A writer, whose letters on the subject of the interference of the Crown with the Cabinet, originally published in a newspaper had, when published in a collected form, in 1878 reached the twentieth thousand, says:—

"Those who remember the Crimean War, may also perhaps remember that the immediate cause of it, so far as we are concerned, was the interpretation attached by Russia to the Vienna Note, after it had been accepted by all parties except Turkey. A despatch from Count Nesselrode made it clear that Russia understood the Note in the sense which the Turkish Government alleged it was capable of bearing—a sense different from that in which it had been accepted by the other Powers. This difficulty might have been overcome by further negotiation, but the cry went forth that Russia had tried to deceive us, and the indignation roused by Russia's supposed treachery made war inevitable. We learn now that this was the court view. As soon as Count Nesselrode's despatch was made known we are told that 'not an hour was lost by the Queen and Prince,' in making Lord Aberdeen aware of their views as to the course now to be adopted. It is no surprise to be told that their views prevailed, and that the arguments which dropped from the Royal pen were 'adopted and carried out in detail by Lord Clarendon in a despatch to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, at St. Petersburg, on the 30th of September.' In a letter to Baron Stockmar, two days after this communication of the Queen's views to the Cabinet, the Prince referring to Russia, speaks of 'the cloven foot,' of the 'cat let out of the bag,' of the Vienna Note as 'a trap' set for us, with the connivance of Austria, and of the folly of acting as if our antagonists were 'honourable men.' This was the cue given at once to the Cabinet, to the nation, and to as many as Baron Stockmar chose to acquaint with the 'views' of the British Court. The change in the temper of the nation was as sudden as a transformation scene, and we were irrevocably committed to war. … The scheme for enlisting foreigners, which got us into such a scrape with the United States, was of the Prince's suggesting. The Cabinet eyed it with suspicion at first, but ended by adopting it, as is duly noted to the Prince's glorification."^[1]

All this is now before the British nation, and the nation can judge how far the Prince Consort's advocacy of the Channel Tunnel is a guarantee that the Channel Tunnel is likely to be a powerful element of good, and not a powerful element of evil to the island of Great Britain. A man can have but one country. An Englishman looks upon England from an Englishman's point of view. A German looks upon England from a German's point of view; and as the Channel Tunnel would seem to do little more than place England and France on the same footing as Germany and France are, the German sees no objection to the Channel Tunnel. But I do not think that the Englishmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth century will submit to be governed by Germans. It is natural that an Englishman should desire the prosperity of England. It is natural that a German should, desire the prosperity of Germany. A German may desire to make war on Russia, fancying he sees some advantage to Germany in such a proceeding, while an Englishman seeing no advantage to England in a war with Russia, may not desire to make such a war.

Indeed, if Sir W. E. Watkin were to succeed in his scheme of a Channel Tunnel, matters would be very considerably altered for the better as regards the relations of Germany towards France, inasmuch as France would then have another next neighbour, to quarrel with, which next neighbour might offer subjects of competition as well worth fighting for as Strasburg and Metz. Instead of having a pacific tendency this Channel Tunnel would carry us back to the time when we were burthened with the cost of fortifications and a garrison for Calais. Assuming that we should not resume our old desire to possess Calais, we should be by no means safe in assuming that the French would not desire to possess Dover, as some of their political writers express a desire to possess or to regain Strasburg and Metz. I know nothing farther respecting the Prince Consort's and Mr. Cobden's advocacy of the Channel Tunnel, than the statement of Sir W. E. Watkin quoted in a former page. I know nothing of the reasons for such a Tunnel which the Prince Consort and Mr. Cobden may have given. From the admitted general benevolence of both, it may be inferred that they considered the Tunnel as likely to have a tendency to produce peace and not to produce war. But it is given to few, very few, if any, of the sons of men, to foresee the proximate far less the distant and remote consequences of human acts. The character of Mr. Cobden was energetic and sanguine. These two qualities were most important in the work he had to do in the Anti-Corn Law battle. I have seen Mr. Cobden, and that too when he was within less than two years of victory, almost inclined to think the struggle hopeless.

But the sanguine character of mind which Mr. Cobden possessed is not altogether a safe guide in such speculations as the Channel Tunnel, nor is it in the large questions of peace and war, of foreign policy, of the principle of non-intervention in which Mr. Cobden engaged after the settlement of the Corn Law question. The editor of his speeches says in the preface, that Mr. Cobden said that war is never desired by a people, but by politicians and military men, whose ambition and cupidity are fired by the prospect of advancement or profit. To show how difficult it is to get at truth, I will quote a letter of Mr. Cobden to me, dated "Midhurst, 25th November 1858." Mr. Cobden says:—

"Since we last met, the war with Russia occurred, and I confess it tended rather to modify my opinion as to the aristocratic origin of all our wars. I watched very closely the forces at work in carrying us into that war, and I did not find that the aristocratic element predominated. The House of Commons was far less warlike than the people. Talking to Lord Aberdeen one day about the origin of the war, he said it was the press that prevented him from keeping the peace. Has it not always been so? I suspect that the newspapers are far more powerful now than ever, and that they are gaining upon the power of the orators of whom you hold so unfavourable an opinion. As a general rule, I think, great orators have done quite as much harm as good. They have this to be said for them, that they are a sort of guarantee in parliamentary government that we are not governed by downright fools. It by no means insures our being Under the rule of honest men or wise statesmen."

Mr. Cobden died on the 2nd of April, 1865, more than ten years before the publication of Sir Theodore Martin's third volume of the Life of the Prince Consort. Consequently Mr. Cobden had not, in forming his opinion respecting the origin of the Crimean War, the assistance which he would have derived from that third volume. When Lord Aberdeen said to Mr. Cobden that it was the press that prevented him from keeping the peace, he is not to be supposed to have communicated to Mr. Cobden all that he knew respecting the origin of the war. The difficulty arising from Count Nesselrode's despatch as to the sense attached by Russia to the Vienna Note, after it had been accepted by all parties except Turkey—a sense different from that in which it had been accepted by the other Powers, "might," says the writer^[2] before quoted, "have been overcome by further negotiation, but the cry went forth that Russia had tried to deceive us, and the indignation roused by Russia's supposed treachery made war inevitable." I need not repeat the words before quoted, but what is the conclusion that follows from all this? By "the cry went forth" is meant what Lord Aberdeen said to Mr. Cobden that it was the press that prevented Lord Aberdeen from keeping the peace. Who set on the press? It would be strange if it should appear that two of the advocates of Sir W. E. Watkins's Channel Tunnel were one intentionally the other unintentionally among the chief promoters of the Crimean War.

It will be necessary to make a careful examination of a work published by Mr. Cobden in April, 1853, which I have no doubt was read by the Czar Nicholas and had great influence in determining him on war by leading him to imagine that England had really fallen into the condition described in the words of a French Vice-Admiral which I will quote—a condition such that the French or any other foreigner had only to effect a landing in order to drive the English before them like a flock of sheep and plunder and insult them to any extent that might please the new conquerors.

Mr. Cobden would not, it may be assumed, take a German's view of a Channel Tunnel, but he was not altogether unlikely to take a view more favourable to France than an average Englishman would do.

In March, 1853, Mr. Cobden published "1793 and 1853, in three letters," in the preface to the Library Edition of which he says:—

"I have been charged with an anachronism in having designated the hostilities which terminated in 1815 as the war of 1793. . . . It is true that there were brief suspensions of hostilities at the truce of Amiens, and during Bonaparte's short sojourn at Elba; but even if it were clear that Napoleon's ambition put an end to the peace, it would prove nothing but that he had by the ordinary workings of the moral law been in the meantime raised into a retributive agent for the chastisement of those who were the authors of the original war"

In this passage Mr. Cobden has, no doubt unintentionally, misrepresented facts. This arose from Mr. Cobden's having read in Hansard the debates in both Houses of Parliament on the war with France from 1791 to 1796, but apparently not having carried his investigation beyond 1796. He thus concludes that England was the aggressor throughout the war till 1815, having been the aggressor in 1793. Whereas, in 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte having obtained the command of the army of Italy assumed a policy of a universally aggressive character, which Mr. Cobden has apparently overlooked and given Bonaparte credit for virtues which he did not possess.

Mr. Cobden says (p. 11):—

"If you would really understand the motives with which we embarked upon the last French war, you must turn to Hansard, and read the debates in both Houses of Parliament upon the subject from 1791 to 1796. But there must be a very precise and accurate attention to dates, in order to understand the subject in hand. Our business lies with the interval from 1789, when the Constituent Assembly of France met, till 1793, when war commenced between England and France."

Now, if Mr. Cobden had continued his careful study of Hansard beyond 1796, he could not have failed to perceive that in and after 1796 the situation changed prodigiously. I think he could not have failed to be forcibly impressed by passages in the debates of both Houses of Parliament in 1800, particularly with the passage in Pitt's speech in the House of Commons, on the 3rd February, 1800.

"If we look," Pitt says, "at the catalogue of the breaches of treaty, of the acts of perfidy, which are precisely commensurate with the number of treaties made by the republic (for I have sought in vain for any one which it has made and which it has not broken); if we trace the history of them all, or if we select those which have been accompanied by the most atrocious cruelty, the name of Bonaparte will be found allied to more of them than that of any other in the history of the crimes and miseries of the last ten years."

Mr. Cobden's statement that England was the aggressor throughout the whole war, instead of only for the first three years, is contradicted point- blank by a French writer of authority. "The war," this writer says, "which England was waging against us, so iniquitous at the beginning, had become, thanks to our aggressive policy, a guarantee and a protection to small states."^[3]

It is clear, then, that the France of 1796 was not the France of 1792. The change might have come even if the man had not come, but since 1792 a man had appeared in the revolutionary armies of France, whose talents for war would alone have made him powerful. But he possessed also an art in deceiving those with whom he negotiated, which bore a certain resemblance to that of Cæsar Borgia, who is said to have had a joviality and apparent simplicity of manner which, notwithstanding his often proved perfidy, amused men and put them off their guard, throwing them perpetually into his trap. His talents for war and his talents for deceiving mankind had raised this man to a great height of power; of power so great that the British Parliament was perhaps the only place in Europe where men dared to speak out their real opinions respecting him and his deeds.

It may be difficult to steer the middle course between those whom Mr. Cobden designates panic-mongers^[4] and those whom others might designate confidence-mongers. We have all heard of the confidence-trick, and most of us have met with the man who while winking at his own cleverness has run his head against a lamp-post. The letter of the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne appeared in 1847, when Louis Philippe was on the throne, and has been, says Mr. Cobden, "the text-book for panic-mongers ever since."^[5] It is rather singular that the brotherly love-mongers, and not the panic-mongers, are now the advocates of increased armaments—for there cannot be a doubt that a Channel Tunnel will infallibly lead to enormously increased armaments.

It is not unreasonable to require from any man who has given an opinion in favour of a Channel Tunnel, some satisfactory evidence that the man has manifested a sure-footed prescience in other matters of such importance that they concern the life or death of a nation. Mr. Cobden appears to take for granted that the least sympton of distrust is unworthy of a civilized nation, such as England esteems herself to be; and that to borrow the language of a letter of Sir William Molesworth which Mr. Cobden reprints (p. 80), "the French are as civilized as ourselves—in some respects intellectually our superiors." Well, what of that? I suppose Napoleon Bonaparte was intellectually the superior of most men. But did that prevent him from being a public robber, whose acts of perfidy were commensurate with the number of treaties made by him? And, further, Sir William Molesworth says that the French "possess a constitutional government; that the love of peace, and the determination to preserve peace, have given to the King of the French, a constant majority in the Chambers." I was always under the impression that it was something of a different kind, rather concerned with patronage than peace, that gave Louis Philippe his majority in the Chambers; and as for the love of peace which Mr. Cobden and Sir William Molesworth set forth as so violent a passion among Frenchmen, I will quote presently from the French Enquête Parlementaire of November, 1849, the opinion of a French Vice-Admiral, who appears to an ordinary observer to have rather more of the love of war than of the love of peace, of which Sir William Molesworth attributes to him a love so ardent.

Mr. Cobden appears to consider the letter of the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne on the National Defences of Great Britain, as the production of a man whose nervous system had been weakened by age. Mr. Cobden says ("1793 and 1853," p. 59):—

"Sometimes the strongest part of our nature, which may have been subjected to the greatest strain, declines the first. In the Duke's case, his nervous system, his "iron" characteristic gave way. He who at forty was incapable of fear, at eighty was subject to almost infantine alarms."

Mr. Cobden, though he does not absolutely profess the non-resistance principle, appears to place great reliance on the increase of commercial industry in France. He also quotes (pp. 79, 80) a letter addressed by Sir William Molesworth, January 17, 1848, to the editor of The Spectator London newspaper, in which the writer says:—

"You say that the next attack on England will probably be without notice. Good God! can it be possible that you, whom I ranked so high among the public instructors of this nation—that you consider the French to be ruffians, Pindarees, free-booters—that you believe it necessary to keep constant watch and ward against them? Are you not aware that the French are as civilized as ourselves. Have you forgotten that they have passed through a great social revolution, which has equalized property, abolished privileges, and converted the mass of the people into thrifty and industrious men, to whom war is hateful, and the conscription detestable?"

This letter of Sir William Molesworth, which expresses indignation at the idea of its being necessary to keep watch and ward against the French bears date, January 17, 1848. By the end of 1849, the French Government would seem to be acting in a manner not quite calculated to justify the effusion of brotherly love exhibited towards them by Mr. Cobden and Sir William Molesworth. At least this inference appears to result from the following "evidence of Vice-Admiral Dupetit-Thouars," given in the French Enquête Parlementaire nominated in November, 1849:—

"While speaking of war, I have something to say, which I think important and well-founded, and which I am the more convinced of, because the English themselves, good judges of the dangers they are exposed to, admit it. The brochure of Prince de Joinville produced a great effect in the maritime world, especially in England, and was the cause of very energetic measures being taken for the defence of her coasts. In my opinion, though England may have erected fortifications, a disembarkation is always possible there, and for it we should not require line-of-battle ships. We should only require seventy corvettes, and some avisos of auxiliary steam-power. With these means, without the English having power to resist, we could throw seventy thousand men on the coast of England. All invasions of England have been crowned with success. She is not prepared for a land war as we could make it. The English have not the warrior spirit; and if we have war with them, we should have but one thing to do, that is, a landing."

It might be expected that a Frenchman's opinion of Englishmen would differ somewhat from Englishmen's opinion of themselves; but with so many opportunities of knowing the fighting qualities of Englishmen, one would hardly have looked in a paper printed under the authority of the representatives of the French nation for such an opinion as that which has been just quoted. It is in the evidence of the French Enquête Parlementaire, nominated in November, 1849, and it is accompanied by the evidence of eighty-nine witnesses, flag and other officers, appended to the French report. All this shows that the French Government of that day contemplated a sudden attack upon England—an attack to which the Channel Tunnel would, it may be supposed, have afforded extraordinary facilities. And this took place very soon after the fine frenzy of Sir William Molesworth's indignation at the possibility of any public instructor, like The Spectator, "considering the French to be ruffians, Pindarees, freebooters." "Good God!" exclaims Sir William, like the friend of humanity in Canning's Knife Grinder, in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy, "can it be possible?" And one is inclined so far to follow Sir William's example, as to apply his exclamation not to The Spectator, but to the French Government of 1849, for publishing such opinions, for Vice-Admiral Dupetit-Thouars' utterance is opinion, not evidence. Sir William Molesworth did good service in the matter of the British Colonies, and Mr. Cobden did good service in the matter of the British Corn Laws; but the confidence which they express in the maintenance of peace, is the confidence rather of a dreamer than a statesman.

Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who appeared upon the scene two or three years after the Duke of Wellington's letter to Sir John Burgoyne, commenced his career by strangling a nation in the night-time.

Mr. Kinglake says:^[6]—

"From 1836 until 1848, Prince Louis had never ceased to be obscure, except by bringing upon himself the laughter of the world; and his election to the chair of the Presidency had only served to bring upon him a more constant outpouring of the scorn and sarcasm which Paris knows how to bestow. Even the suddenness and perfect success of the blow struck in the night between the 1st and the 2nd of December, 1851, had failed to make Paris think of him with gravity. But it was otherwise after three o'clock on the 4th of December; and it happened that his most strenuous adversaries were those who best served his cause; for the more they strove to show that he and he alone had planned and ordered the massacre, the more completely they relieved him from the disqualification which had hitherto made it impossible for him to become the supreme ruler of France. Before the night closed in on the 4th of December, he was sheltered safe from ridicule by the ghastly heaps on the Boulevards."

According to this view Paris had to pay somewhat dear for the indulgence of its powers of ridicule, I will quote here the narrative of an eyewitness, which Mr. Kinglake had not seen—at least it was only published recently.

On the morning of the 4th of December, 1851, the streets of Paris were deserted, and bills were posted recommending the inhabitants to remain in their houses, and stating that every one who resisted Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would be "shot." Something strange and terrible seemed about to happen—the more unexpected as the city where the bills were posted was the most luxurious city, the French would say, the most civilized city in Europe, in the world. On the morning of that 4th of December, 1851, large bodies of French troops, of men in military garb, garb resembling that worn by men professedly raised, embodied and disciplined to defend their country against foreign armed enemies, suddenly appeared on the Boulevards of Paris, and fired upon unarmed men, and upon women and children—fired at those who were in the streets, and at those who were at the windows of houses. As there is nothing in London corresponding to this Paris Boulevards, I can only attempt to give those who have not seen the Paris Boulevards some idea of the proceeding of one regiment which I am about to place before them by saying that it was somewhat as if a regiment of Life Guards or Horse Guards were suddenly led into Trafalgar Square, and the Colonel at the head of the regiment was heard to say "we are going to sweep away everything." If what happened in the Paris Boulevards had been done in Trafalgar Square, and in the streets leading from Trafalgar Square to Westminster Abbey, the man who did it would probably—long before the expiration of the twenty years during which the author of the coup d'état of December, 1851, reigned in France—have had to walk out of the same window at Whitehall, from which a man walked somewhat more than two hundred years before to the scaffold for having murdered large numbers of Englishmen, as this Corsican, or of whatever race or nation of mankind he came, murdered large numbers of French men, women, and children.

The present Paris correspondent of The Daily News thus writes in The Daily News of Tuesday, December 16, 1879:—

"As an eye-witness of the massacre of the Boulevards on December 4th, I cannot allow Marshal Canrobert's version of that historical day to pass uncontradicted. I don't quote the histories of Victor Hugo, Kinglake, and others, but merely recount what I did see. At that time I was not the correspondent of The Daily News, but was an intimate friend of the gentleman who then filled the post. At his request, it being feared that postal communication would be stopped, I started for London on December 2nd, writing with a pencil in the train. I returned to Paris on the morning of the 4th, when I found the streets deserted, and bills posted recommending the inhabitants to remain in their houses and stating—lugubrious threat, but too soon to be realized—that every one who resisted the behests of Louis Napoleon would be "shot." I walked from the Northern Railway Station to the Rue de la Paix, seeing scarcely anybody in the streets. To refresh myself for want of sleep I went into an establishment, no longer existing, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevards, called Les Bains de Venus, to take a warm bath. On coming out I found a terrorized crowd in the gangway, and was told that it was unsafe to go into the streets. I said I must go, and pushed my way through. On emerging I found myself just at the head of a regiment of cavalry whose rear, extending along the Rue de la Paix, reached beyond the column of the Place Vendome. I heard a youthful chubby-faced Lieutenant-Colonel say, and I shall never forget the words, 'Nous allons tout balayer.' [We are going to sweep away everything.] And, he added, looking significantly at me, 'Si on vent traverser, piques.' [If any one crosses the street, spear him.] Little suspecting what horrors were about to ensue, I was not greatly frightened by this menace, upon which the nearest sergeant, with a halberd, did not act, and without quickening my pace, I walked to my then lodging, a few doors off, No. 29, Boulevard des Capucins. From my windows I saw the regiment to which I had heard the order given to tout balayer charge down the Boulevards des Italiens as far as Tortoni's, where there was nothing to balayer at all. Then they halted, and each soldier drawing his carbine, his horse going at a walk, fired deliberately into every house right and left, killing servants and children at the windows. I did not see the river of blood on the slope of the Boulevard Montmartre, attested by irrefragable evidence, and I was not present when a gun under Canrobert's command made a gigantic round hole in the Maison Sallandranze. But I did see the next day, when terror had done its work, every house for the space of a mile on the Boulevards from Tortoni's to the Porte St. Martin, spotted like a plum padding, from ground-floor to sixth story, with bullet marks.

"This was done in pursuance of the diabolical orders from the Elysée, to strike terror into the rich bourgeois quarters, where there was no resistance, in order that the rumour of their submission might discourage the St. Antoine faubourg and other arrondissements where there were barricades. Marshal Canrobert calculates on short memories when he pretends that the massacre of the Boulevards, in which he was a principal actor, was only the haphazard work of a few drunken or excited soldiers."

Mr. Cobden thus describes the first impressions produced in England, by what took place in France at the beginning of December, 1851:—

"Are there no symptoms that we have spirits amongst us who want not the will, if the power and occasion be afforded, to play the part of Burke in our day? He excited the indignation of his countrymen against a republic which had decapitated a king; now our sympathies are roused in behalf of a republic which has been strangled by an emperor."

Mr. Cobden's argument which follows, namely, "that the French nation are the legitimate tribunal for disposing of the grievance," and what he Says a page or two after that "the French people, for reasons best known to themselves, acquiesced in his rule," amount to this, that they could never have got rid of the tyrant who had got upon their shoulders, like the old man of the sea upon the shoulders of Sinbad, unless they had received assistance from without from the genius of Moltke, for whom the night-strangler who inherited neither the genius nor the valour of the great man whose name he bore, was no match. I agree with Mr. Cobden that no good is done by levelling at Louis Napoleon the same invectives which were hurled at the Constituent Assembly sixty years before. Invective is nothing without originality. If a man were to attempt to hurl at his enemy some of the most expressive epithets, arranged in similarly constructed periods, that Demosthenes hurled at Æschines, they would fall flat. A written letter, or a spoken speech, could not have the force, and effect of the words of Burke in the House of Commons, when called up by Fox's strong expression of admiration of the French Revolution, he said:—

"He hated the old despotism of France and still more he hated the new: it was a plundering, ferocious, bloody, tyrannical democracy, without a single virtue to redeem its crimes; and so far from being, as his honourable friend had inadvertently said, worthy of imitation, he would spend his last breath and the last drop of his blood—he would quit his best friends and join his worst enemies—to oppose the least tittle of such a spirit or such an example in England."

As soon as the monarchy of Louis Philippe was succeeded by the short-lived republic, we have seen that, instead of an effusion of brotherly love together with liberty, equality, and universal philanthropy, one of the first schemes of the philanthropic republic was an invasion of England. Of course a railway projector who sees, or fancies he sees, enormous profits in a Channel Tunnel, shuts his eyes to all other consequences of his Tunnel. He can invest his profits in foreign securities, and leaving England to her fate, retire to Switzerland or America, rich and contented and—something else—affording to the world an example of "the cold calculating baseness of commercial avarice."

In the work before referred to, "1793 and 1853," published in 1853, Mr. Cobden says (p. 85):—

"Nobody, I believe, denies that Louis Napoleon received the votes of a majority of the French people. In the election which took place for the presidency, when he was supported by three-fourths of the electors, his opponent General Cavaignac had possession of the ballot-boxes, and there could be no fraud to account for the majority. With what view did the French people elect him Emperor? To maintain, in the first place, as he is pledged to do, the principles of 1789; and, in the next, to preserve order, keep the peace, and enable them to prosper. Nobody denies that these are the objects desired by France. Yet we are told that he will, regardless of public opinion, plunge the country into war."

In the preceding page, too, of the same work, Mr. Cobden uses these words of Louis Napoleon, "Public opinion, by which alone he reigns." In excuse for these remarks, it may perhaps be said that at that time it was not possible to obtain even a glimpse of the true history of the coup d'état of December, 1851.

Mr. Cobden's prophetic vision has been appealed to sometimes of late. In this case it does not seem to have been very trustworthy. Did or did not Louis Napoleon "plunge the country into war"? What else could he do? He was compelled for the very life of him to do something to other people to help to make Frenchmen forget what he had done to them. He had stamped out the life of the French nation and left it but a mere corpse—galvanized, indeed, into occasional starts of vitality by the springs of that vast system of machinery by which a clerk can dictate to a nation. But Mr. Cobden's statement must be examined in detail.

In the first place it may be admitted that the election to the presidency had been conducted with perfect fairness. Mr. Cobden, however, seems to proceed to the further conclusion, though he does not say so in so many words, that the election to the office of Emperor was also conducted with fairness—with as much fairness indeed as the election to the office of President had been conducted. But between the two elections certain strange events had taken place. There had been sudden imprisonment; there had been sudden murder; there had been sudden massacre on a larger scale, as far as my historical knowledge goes, than had been known since the wholesale murders of Sulla called proscriptions. It is impossible to judge of the relation to each other of the two elections by jumping from the one to the other. There was a chasm between them in which were engulphed the bloody corpses of many thousands of Frenchmen—how many will never be known.

Mr. Kinglake has given a striking description of the result of the deeds of this Bonaparte and his accomplices:—

"Of all men dwelling in cities the people of Paris are perhaps the most warlike. Less almost than any other Europeans are they accustomed to overvalue the lives of themselves and their fellow-citizens. With them the joy of the fight has power to overcome fear and grief, and they had been used to great street-battles; but they had not been used of late to witness the slaughter of people unarmed and helpless. At the sight of what was done on that 4th of December the great city was struck down as though by a plague. A keen-eyed Englishman, who chanced to come upon some of the people retreating from these scenes of slaughter, declared that their countenances were of a strange livid hue which he had never before seen. This was because he had never before seen the faces of men coming straight from the witnessing of a massacre. They say that the shock of being within sight and hearing the shrieks broke down the nervous strength of many a brave though tender man, and caused him to burst into sobs as though he were a little child. . . . Because of the palsy that came upon her after the slaughter on the Boulevard, Paris was delivered bound into the hands of Prince Louis Bonaparte, and Morny, and Maupas or De Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. And the benefit which Prince Louis derived from the massacre was not transitory. It is a maxim of French politics that happen what may, a man seeking to be a ruler of France must not be ridiculous."^[7]

To proceed now to the second part of the process as stated in the passage I have quoted from Mr. Cobden, I will repeat the words used by Mr. Cobden. They are these:—

"With what view did the French people elect him Emperor? To maintain, in the first place, as he is pledged to do, the principles of 1789; and, in the next, to preserve order, keep the peace, and enable them to prosper."

Mr. Cobden does not say that the election was conducted with perfect fairness, as that for the presidency had been; but his words taken with those he uses in the preceding page—"public opinion by which alone he reigns"—unquestionably lead to such an inference. What really took place I will give in the words of Mr. Kinglake:—

"At length the time came for the operation of what was called the Plebiscite. The arrangements of the plotters had been of such a kind as to allow France no hope of escape from anarchy, except by submitting herself to the dictatorship of Louis Bonaparte; for although the President in his proclamation had declared that if the country did not like his Presidency they might choose some other in his place, no such alternative was really offered. According to the wording of the plebiscite, a vote given for any candidate other than Louis Bonaparte would have been null. An elector was only permitted to vote 'Yes,' or 'No;' and it seems plain that the prospect of anarchy involved in the negative vote would alone have operated as a sufficing menace. Therefore, even if the collection of the suffrages had been carried on with perfect fairness, the mere stress of the question proposed would have made it impossible that there should be a free election: the same central power which, nearly four years before, had compelled the terrified nation to pretend that it loved a republic, would have now forced the same helpless people to kneel, and say they chose for their one only lawgiver the man recommended to them by Monsieur de Morny.

"Having the army and the whole executive power in their hands, and having preordained the question to be put to the people, the brethren of the Elysée, it would seem, might have safely allowed the proceeding to go to its sure conclusion without further coercing the vote; and if they had done this, they would have given a colour to the assertion that the result of the plebiscite was a national ratification of their act. But remembering what they had done, and having blood on their hands, they did not venture upon a free election. What they did was this: they placed thirty-two departments under martial law; and since they wanted nothing more than a sheet of paper and a pen and ink in order to place every other department in the same predicament, it can be said without straining a word, that potentially, or actually, the whole of France was under martial law.

"Therefore men voted under the sword. But martial law is only one of the circumstances which constitute the difference between an honest election and a plebiscite of the Bonaparte sort. To the adversaries of the Elysée all effective means of concerted action were forbidden by Morny and Maupas. Except for the uses of the Elysée there was no press. Even the printing and distributing of negative voting. tickets was made penal; and during the ceremony which was called an 'election,' several persons were actually arrested, and charged with the offence of distributing negative voting-tickets, or persuading others to vote against the President."^[8]

Who would suppose that a man of Mr. Cobden's abilities should have had nothing more than what has been quoted to say about Louis Napoleon Bonaparte? For though Louis Bonaparte did not possess the abilities and force of character which made the Roman Emperor so terrible a tyrant, there was a certain parallel in the two situations; for Louis Bonaparte stood somewhat in the relation to the first Bonaparte which Tiberius stood to the first Caesar. Louis Bonaparte was probably a more humane man by nature than the first Bonaparte—which could not be said of Tiberius as compared with Julius Cæsar; and yet, though Louis Bonaparte might not be naturally blood-thirsty, I fear the records of historical truth will show him to have had more blood on his hands than Tiberius—that he was, in fact, as blood-stained a man as Sulla.

The career of Prince Louis Bonaparte, known in French history as Napoleon the Third, is indeed an anomaly in history. For though he can surely not he compared to Tiberius in force of character or in military or political knowledge and ability, he did more than Tiberius can be said to have done. He stamped out the life of a great nation for some twenty years. What Tiberius did was to complete the work of Julius and Augustus in stamping out the life of the Roman Republic. But he only completed the work begun by the first Cæsar, and carried on by his immediate successor, whereas the work begun by the first Bonaparte had been interrupted—broken off completely;—and this man and his band of coadjutors had to do it over again from the beginning. They succeeded in what they had undertaken; and how they succeeded is as strange and terrible a tale, as Mr. Kinglake tells it, as can be found in the records of the world; and more wonderful, because, as Mr. Kinglake has shown, the head conspirator among these adventurers wanted that quality which has usually been considered indispensable for such work—the power of calm though rapid thought in moments of crisis and of danger. It was indeed sad for France that a man should be able to stamp out her life who certainly could not be reckoned a man of genius in the sense in which the first Bonaparte was a man of genius, and whose daring was to that of the first Bonaparte as the murder of unarmed citizens, and of old men, women and children, was to the first Bonaparte's passage of the Bridge of Lodi, swept by the Austrian artillery, at the head of his grenadiers. "You were first," said someone afterwards at St. Helena. "No," was the reply, "Lannes was first—I was second." When great genius and daring and energy go together, no wonder if a nation bear with the dominion of such a man, and even submit for a time to the dominion of those who only inherit his name. But to inherit or assume a name is not to inherit the genius which made that name famous, is not to inherit the mind, which gave dominion over mankind. The term "inheritor of a great name" is an error; a great name is attached to him who earned it, and cannot descend to heirs like land or money.

After having escaped from the tyranny of the landlords, we must not allow ourselves to fall under the tyranny of the traders and manufacturers and railway projectors—a tyranny manifested in the form of laying the island of Great Britain open to invasion and rendering it subject to heavy taxes to support armaments and fortifications in order that traders and manufacturers and railway speculators may have increased facilities for filling their pockets at other people's expense.

I believe I have already quoted the words of a certain French Vice-Admiral:—"The English have not the warrior-spirit; and if we have war with them, we should have but one thing to do, that is, a landing."^[9] It may be inferred that this French Vice-Admiral was a very small boy when the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo were fought, or believed that the French won both those battles. Mr. Cobden, who seems to admire and cry up France and every thing French, as he depreciates England and every thing English on all occasions, might perhaps have approved of this Frenchman's opinion, published by his Government in the official records of a Government Inquiry.^[10] Mr. Cobden says("1793 and 1853," p. 5): —"When shall we be proof against the transparent appeal to our vanity involved in the 'liberties of Europe' argument?" He then proceeds to say that, "we never had forty thousand British troops engaged in one field of battle on the Continent during the whole war;" and infers thence that we could have had nothing to do with putting down Bonaparte; in fact, that the Russian winter did the business, just as the Irish famine did the business of putting down the bread-tax. There is something in this; and yet Wellington did far more to put down Bonaparte than Cobden did to put down the bread-tax. In answer to Mr. Cobden's "forty thousand British troops" argument, did Mr. Cobden never hear that his hero Bonaparte said that there were only two kinds of troops—good and bad; and that there were no troops in Italy, save the Sardinians, that could stand fire; that they fled like wild ducks at the first volley. Mr. Cobden writes as if he had completely approfondi the philosophy of courage and cowardice. I do not presume to say that I know very much of what is meant by standing fire; but a friend of mine who was on Sir De Lacy Evans's staff at the battle of the Alma, where he was knocked off his horse by a splinter of a shell, and at the battle of Inkermann was on the staff of General Pennefather, to whom he gave his horse when the general's horse was killed, and mounted a troop horse which was struck very soon after; and in one of his journeys to bring up ammunition—the road he had to traverse being swept by the Russian artillery—as he was galloping forward he heard a thud behind him, and, turning his head round, saw his brother staff officer rolling on the ground in the last death agonies, having been struck by a shot and almost cut in two, gave me his notions about standing fire, which were as follows:—

"I do not care twopence for being handed down to posterity any how—such a posterity as it is likely to be. Why, under the tuition of the Quakers and the philanthropists, people have come to such a pass nowadays that they can never speak of any act of war except with a whine and an intimation that it is half criminal; in another generation they will hold it altogether criminal; and will look upon it as that pious skunk, old———seems to have done when he entered in his journal—that journal which I believe he wrote with the idea that God Almighty was looking over his shoulder all the time, and would be gammoned by what he read—my uncle's death in action as 'an awful instance.'

"By the way, did it ever occur to you to speculate what will be the result of the peculiar course of tuition which I have just spoken of? Perhaps it is all owing to my deficiency of natural valour, but my impression, derived equally from internal feeling and from observation, is that standing fire is a very unpleasant thing, and extremely repugnant to the natural man. If we in some measure do it now, I take it that it is in virtue of the fag-end of the old-fashioned training which instilled into a man from his babyhood that standing fire was the one thing he had to do, and which succeeded in the main in making it easier to most men to stand fire than to refuse to stand it."

Such are the reflections of a man who has had some experience, and consequently has some knowledge of what he is writing about, while Mr. Cobden, who had no knowledge of the matter, wrote dogmatically about it, and called in Gibbon as a witness to support him—Gibbon, though he had been a militia officer, knowing as little about the matter as Mr. Cobden. Mr. Cobden, indeed, quotes these words as spoken by the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, June 15, 1852: "I believe every man is brave"—words which are in direct opposition to the words attributed to Marshal Lannes, that a man who says he does not know fear is a coward. The account which Colonel Gurwood has given of his sensations when his offer to lead the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo had been accepted is very instructive.

Colonel Gurwood put together for a special purpose the particulars of his part in the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo in a pamphlet, of which he printed only fifty copies for private circulation. The preface is dated 14th June, 1845. I have not seen the pamphlet, but the writer of the article, Gurwood, John, in the second supplement to The Penny Cyclopœdia, says that the particulars in his article are taken from one of the fifty copies. The writer of the article appears to be in error in saying that the officer who commanded one of the storming parties was of the rank of major. That officer, whom I have met at the house of a common friend, was at the time I saw him a major, Major Mackie, but at the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo he was Lieutenant Mackie of the Connaught Rangers. His statement—and I believe that he and Colonel Gurwood were both men incapable of wilful inveracity or misstatement—was that he accepted the surrender of the governor; that a sword, afterwards found to be that of an aide-de-camp, had been presented to him in token of surrender; and that while he was engaged in saving the lives of two officers who laid hold of him for protection, one on each arm, Lieutenant Gurwood came up and obtained the sword of the governor. Major Mackie died in 1839, and this statement was made public in the following year in a second edition of that portion of Napier's History relating to the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo, the first having stated that "Mr. Gurwood, who, though wounded, had been among the foremost at the lesser breach, received the governor's sword."

The writer of the paper in The Cyclopœdia says that the statement of Colonel Gurwood was irreconcilable with that of Major Mackie. I do not see this at all. Lieutenant Mackie supposed that the sword of an aide-de-camp was the sword of the governor, and while he was protecting two French officers, Lieutenant Gurwood came up and obtained the sword of the governor. There is nothing irreconcilable here. The luck was on Gurwood's side in getting the governor's sword, and as no doubt was thrown on the truth of Gurwood's story, his finding the French officer whose life he had saved does no more for his case than Major Mackie's finding the two French officers whose lives he had saved would have done for his case. No one that knew Colonel Gurwood or Major Mackie would have doubted their word as men of veracity and honour.

Colonel Gurwood's narrative of his adventures during that night is one of the most valuable pieces of evidence on the question on which Gibbon and Mr, Cobden express themselves so dogmatically. When he knew that his offer had been accepted, he says:—"I kept on eating, principally bread, but I carefully controlled my thirst, knowing how insatiable it becomes under nervous excitement. On the concerted signal for the assault—three guns from the batteries—my heart beat double quick, and I applied my mouth to the calabash of Jack Jones, from which I swallowed a gulp of 'aguardiente.' On arriving at the top of the breach, I saw a musket levelled not far from my head, and a Frenchman in the act of pulling the trigger. I bobbed my head in time, but was wounded and stunned by the fire. I found myself at the bottom of the breach. I cannot tell how long I was there, but on putting my hand to the back of my head, where I felt that I had been wounded, I found that the skull was not fractured." He again scrambled up the breach, and gained the rampart of the bastion. Here he saw one of his men, Pat Lowe, in the act of bayoneting a French officer who resisted being plundered, and he saved the Frenchman by knocking down the Irishman. His prisoner guided him to a tower where the French Governor and some officers had shut themselves up. He summoned them to surrender, and the door was unbarred; but Pat Lowe, who had rejoined him, called out, "Dear Mr. Gurwood, they will murder you!" and as he entered he was seized round the neck and expected a sword in his body; but he found that the person who had seized him round the neck was the governor, and that he yielded himself his prisoner. Gurwood conducted him to Lord Wellington on the ramparts, who said, "Did you take him?" and on his replying that he did, handed to him the governor's sword, with the words: "Take it, you are the proper person to wear it." He wore it ever afterwards.

It seemed to be the end and aim of Mr. Cobden's book to cry down military men and cry up cotton-spinners and calico-printers. Military men may be good and bad, and cotton-spinners and calico-printers may be more good than bad. But the mistake was that Mr. Cobden and some others after Peel's panegyric assumed Mr. Cobden to be not only a great, but a universal genius; which of course was a mistake. He was indeed an able man, and an eloquent man in a masculine kind of eloquence, and I agree with Mr. Forster, that in dividing the boroughs I should prefer Mr. Cobden's plan of the single member constituencies to the double member. The impression left by some of Mr. Cobden's letters which have been published, in which the writer gives opinions about the Government of British India, and about the Prussian Government as compared with the English Constitution, is that Mr. Cobden had not studied the subject of the English Constitution, of British India, of Canada, or of the English Colonies, sufficiently to have accurate knowledge on that subject.

Although Mr. Cobden has at once overlooked Bonaparte's true character and overrated his genius, he has shown a tendency to underrate the genius of Wellington, and in fact to run down military talent altogether. The truth is more nearly attained in some remarks of a military friend of mine, who has seen service enough to enable him to say that a man who has been in a battle all the time it lasted knows no more of that battle than a herring does of the North Sea. He says:—

"You say that Cromwell's genius in war was creative, not strategic. I think that this is well put, and useful, as tending to lead to a reflection which has often occurred to myself, viz., the number of different geniuses (if that is the plural) which a man must have on hand who hopes to be a first-class general. Perhaps professional conceit may have something to do with- it, but I have always thought that, to make a great general, it took a more perfect and complete man than would be required for any other walk in life. I do not say that to make a Napoleon, it requires that any one faculty should be so highly developed as would be wanted for a Newton; what I mean is, that while a Newton can be made by one abnormally developed faculty in an otherwise mediocre mind, a Napoleon must have power in every direction."

I venture to think that these remarks are at once just and profound. He who made them, like another friend I have referred to in these pages, is perhaps one of those subtile thinkers who appear in this world and live and die unheard, leaving no name behind them.

"My Lords," said Nelson, in a speech in the House of Lords, November 23, 1802, "I have in different countries seen much of the miseries of war. I am therefore in my most inmost soul a man of peace. Yet would I not, for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice one jot of England's honour. Our honour is inseparably combined with our genuine interest."

The gentlemen of the English Peace Society have not shown in the peace question the logical power which they have shown in other matters. When they want to purchase a commodity, they do not adopt as a mode of obtaining it at a reasonable price a display of extreme anxiety to possess it. And they could hardly, as men of average rationality, expect that sending a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas was a likely way to lead to peace.

Mr. Kinglake says the Peace party—

"Went on and on, and still on, until their foremost thinker reached the conclusion that, in the event of an attack upon our shores, the invaders ought to be received with such an effusion of hospitality and brotherly love as could not fail to disarm them of their enmity and convert the once dangerous Zouave into the valued friend of the family."^[11]

In a note to this passage, Mr. Kinglake says:—

"I have no copy of this curious pamphlet before me, but it has been quoted (I believe by Lord Palmerston) in the House of Commons, and therefore the passage alluded to in the text might no doubt be found in Hansard. The writer, I remember, went farther than is above stated. He argued that the French people would be so shamed by the kindness shown to their troops that they would never rest until they had paid us a large pecuniary indemnity for any losses or inconvenience which the invasion may have caused."

I have not seen the pamphlet referred to by Mr. Kinglake, but I think it may probably be a work advertised at the end of a Library edition of Mr. Cobden's three letters, published under the title, "1793 and 1853," early in the year 1853, of which I had the honour to receive a presentation copy from the author in August, 1853. The work, which would seem to be the pamphlet referred to by Mr. Kinglake, is thus advertised—"Defensive war proved to be a denial of Christianity, and of the Government of God. With illustrative facts and anecdotes. By Henry C. Wright. 12mo., cloth, price 2s."

The members of the Peace Society are not, however, always consistent; at least they did not always show themselves consistent in their proceedings before the Crimean War. At a Peace and Anti-Loan meeting, in 1849, Lord Dudley Stuart vehemently advocated the propriety of England's giving "energetic and efficient support" to the Turk in resisting Russia; and Mr. Cobden gave his support to Lord Dudley Stuart's arguments, which must be understood to have meant war, if they meant anything. In fact, a man of Mr. Cobden's sagacity must have seen the utter impracticability of such doctrines as those attributed by Mr. Kinglake to the "foremost thinker" of the Peace party.

It is remarkable that the peace-at-any-price doctrine enunciated in the advertisement I have quoted had been acted upon, and put to the test in England at a time when the coasts of England were infested, not by Zouaves, but by Barbary pirates. But I have never discovered that the extremely pacific dispositions of the King who then reigned in England had any effect whatever towards turning the once dangerous Barbary pirate into the valued friend of the family. On the contrary, all the evidence which I have seen bearing on the subject leads to the conclusion that the pacific disposition of the English King, so far from producing a similar disposition in the Barbary pirate, only encouraged and excited him to more extensive depredations.

Mr. Cobden has thrown his work into the form of Letters to the Reverend ———, and begins with these words:—"Accept my thanks for your kindness in forwarding me a copy of your Sermon upon the death of the Duke of Wellington;" and ends with these words:—"When the Master whom you serve mingled in the affairs of this life, it was not to join in the exaltation of military genius or share in the warlike triumphs of nation over nation, but to preach 'Peace on earth and goodwill toward men.'" Suppose some of the Peace-at-any-price Corporation had gone on a pacific mission to Napoleon Bonaparte before the Battle of Waterloo as they went to the Czar Nicholas before the Crimean War. It would no more have stopped the career of Bonaparte than it stopped that of Nicholas. Those traders who are so eager to get rich and cry out for "Peace on earth and goodwill toward men," do not see that they and their goods would be a prey to the thousands of robbers who swarm, and will continue to swarm upon earth, if it were not for that infanterie Anglaise which at Waterloo made good General Foy's remark to Bonaparte on the morning of the battle—"L'infanterie Anglaise en duel c'est le diable."

In the course of an adventurous and stormy life—of the result of which he modestly said that he had been "successful in life"—the Duke of Wellington had opportunities of seeing the effect of the phrase "Peace on earth and goodwill to men," and he wrote thus in a letter to the Earl of Liverpool, dated "Sta. Marinha, 23rd March, 1811":—

"I shall be sorry if Government should think themselves under the necessity of withdrawing from this country, on account of the expense of the contest. From what I have seen of the objects of the French Government and the sacrifices they make to accomplish them, I have no doubt that if the British army were for any reason to withdraw from the Peninsula, and the French. Government were relieved from the pressure of military operations on the Continent, they would incur all risks to land an army in his Majesty's dominions. Then indeed would commence an expensive contest; then would his Majesty's subjects discover what are the miseries of war, of which, by the blessing of God, they have hitherto had no knowledge; and the cultivation, the beauty, the prosperity of the country, and the virtue and happiness of its inhabitants would be destroyed, whatever might be the result of the military operations. God forbid that I should be a witness, much less an actor, in the scene."^[12]

And in his memorable letter to Sir John Burgoyne in 1847, which Mr. Cobden labours to make appear to be the work of a man in his dotage—suffering from softening of the brain—though the words in it are very similar to those in the letter quoted above, and written near forty years before, the Duke says:—

"I am bordering on seventy-seven years, passed in honour. I hope that the Almighty may protect me from being the witness of the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contemporaries to take measures to avert."

1. "The Crown and the Cabinet," pp. 37,38
2. "The Crown and the Cabinet," p. 37.
3. Lamfrey, vol. ii., p. 81.
4. "1793 and 1853," p. 58.
5. "1793 and 1853," p. 58.
6. Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit., vol. i., pp. 286-289.
7. Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit, vol. i;, pp. 286-289 (Wm. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1874).
8. Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit., i., pp. 300-302.
9. Enquête Parlementaire, quoted at page 326 of Our Naval Position and Policy, by a Naval Peer. (London: Longmans and Co., 1859.)
10. The conclusion to be drawn from the whole scope of the French Report and Evidence, is that it was the purpose of France in 1849-50 to strike a decisive blow on the first opportunity England should afford her, which, if successful in affording them a landing, would, according to their own opinion, enable them to drive the English before them or slaughter them like sheep. When a Goverment publishes what the French Government put forth in its Enquête Parlementaire of 1849-50, I do not think we are guilty of infringing the comity of nations in calling this insolence. There is a monarchical insolence and a republican insolence. This is republican insolence, and I think it exceeds monarchical insolence in offensiveness. If Russia were to come under republican government, a Russian republic would probably be a worse neighbour than a Russian Czar. If a French republic of 1870 fancies it is to run the course of the French republic of seventy years before, with a military genius of the highest order to fight its battles, the French Republic of 1883 may find itself very much mistaken. A Channel Tunnel to bring us nearer to such a neighbour may be agreeable to the high philanthropic aspirations of the advanced thinker of the Peace Party, who proposed to receive the invaders with such an effusion of hospitality and brotherly love, as could not fail to convert the Zouave into the friend of the family. Brotherly love! and universal philanthropy! From the oldest record to that of yesterday, brotherly love does not shine very bright. In the oldest family on record brotherly love is represented by Cain. And in Sybil (usually spelt Sibyl) it is represented by Lord Mamey. Burns says, that Tam o' Shanter loved Sonter Johnny like a "vera brither;" and the reason he assigns for this brotherly love is that Tam and Johnny had been "fou for weeks thegither," that is, that they had been drunk for weeks together.
11. Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, i., 415, 5th edition. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1874.
12. Gurwood's Selections from the Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, No. 515, p. 457.