Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848

The "tables," however, are now turned, and therefore we shall not say any more for the present about the blue-book and ledger system. Let us go back to Mr Cobden, whom we still find rather uselessly employed in protesting his total inability to command the clemency of the seasons. We have already shown, by papers published in this Magazine in December last and January of the present year, that our exports have lamentably fallen off, and that the balance of trade is against us. Such, we maintained, and we continue still to maintain, must be the effect of the new theories, especially under the restricted operation of the currency. We are glad to see that upon this latter point, at all events, we are supported by a large majority of the press. Mr Cobden, however, denies the evils of the currency; so that he must fall back upon something else to account for the unexpected defalcation.

Such is our position at home and abroad; and if we have been guilty of a digression, which we cannot altogether deny, we shall plead our motive in justification. When Mr Cobden comes forward with his views of foreign policy, with his ideas of the social progress of the universe, and with his notions as to the policy which hereafter may be adopted by great and ambitious foreign states, – when, after delivering his opinion upon these very weighty matters, he arrives at the inference, not only that we require no addition to our national defences, but that our present establishment of a standing army and navy is absurd, extravagant, and superfluous, we are entitled to inquire into the success with which his first experiment in legislative agitation has been crowned. Of the abundance of good things which he promised, how many have been realised, how many are like to emerge from the dark experimental gulf? If writhing colonies, diminished exports, want of employment, distress at home, enormous failures, monetary restriction, and vast depreciation of property, have followed in the wake of free-trade – if ministry are at present racking such brains as they possess to discover some means of keeping up the revenue to its ordinary level, and if they are forced to lay on a direct additional war-tax in times of the profoundest peace, – surely we shall not incur a charge of fickleness or ingratitude, if we should receive this new oracle of the free-trading Mokanna with some symptoms of dubiety and distrust.

The whole question arose thus. It appears that the Duke of Wellington, whose illustrious reputation and great services entitle him to be heard with the deepest and most reverential respect, has long entertained great uneasiness on account of the undefended state of this country in the case of a hostile invasion. That such an event is likely to take place, no one supposes or has said – that it possibly might take place, very few will venture to deny. The idea is not a new one; for within the range of the present century, preparations have been actually made for that purpose, and that whilst the wonderful power and facilities of steam-navigation were unknown. Fulton – we have seen men who knew him when he was a humble artisan in the West of Scotland – had, despairing of success at home, submitted his models to the French government, who, fortunately for us, did not then appreciate the merits of the invention. Three years afterwards, he started his first steamer on the Hudson in America. The power which our French neighbours had once so nearly within their grasp, at a time when it might have been used to the exceeding detriment of England, became generally known and adopted, and we need not speak of its progress. It has altogether changed the tactics of naval warfare. It can conquer the old difficulties of wind and tide, and it has immensely shortened the period of transit from the continental coast to our own. The security, therefore, of our insular barriers has been materially weakened, and thus far the possibility of an invasion from abroad has been increased. We are not now speaking of the probability, which is matter for subsequent consideration.

This open and admitted fact is the foundation of the whole argument of the Duke of Wellington. In the evening of a glorious life, the greater part of which has been spent in the active service of his country, the veteran soldier has thought it his duty to remind us, for our own guidance and that of our children, of the actual existing state of our national defences, which he deems to be insufficient. It is one of the last, but not, we think, the least important of the services which the venerable Duke has rendered to the nation, with whose proudest history his name will be eternally associated. We take it – or at least we ought to take it – from his lips, as a solemn warning; as the disinterested testimony of a man alike pre-eminent in war and in council; as the deliberate opinion of the GREAT PACIFICATOR OF EUROPE. For notwithstanding the irreverent, mean, and scurrilous taunts of the Manchester gang of demagogues, it is undeniable that the Great Duke has been the chief instrument in procuring for us the blessing of that peace which for two and thirty years we have enjoyed. It was his conquest at Waterloo which hushed the world. The tranquillity of Europe was the stake for which he fought, and he nobly won it. And now, when, at the last hour, this illustrious man comes forward to offer us his advice, and to warn us against the folly of trusting too implicitly to the continuance of that tranquillity, is it wise that we should scorn his counsel?

And what is the proposal which has excited such wrath, and so sorely roused the choler of the bilious Cobden? Simply this – that the British nation should at all times maintain at home a military force sufficient to repel an invasion, should such be attempted, from our shores. The Duke believes and maintains that we cannot now, as formerly, rely solely and implicitly upon our navy for defence, but that, in the event of a war, we must provide against the contingency of an enemy's landing. Our arsenals, he thinks, and our dockyards, should be supported by a military force, and at least we ought to exhibit such a front as will hold out no temptation to a hostile attempt. These are not aggressive, but precautionary measures; and without them, according to the Duke, we cannot consider ourselves secure.

Such are the proposals which Cobden and his clique – we are sorry to observe a gentleman like Sir William Molesworth among them – are prepared to resist to the last. They want no defences at all. They are opposed to any augmentation of the army. They would rather do without it, or reduce the establishment so as to make the national saving equivalent to the diminished amount of revenue consequent upon their commercial experiments. They look upon free-trade as a universal panacea which is to cure all national and social ailments, and to remedy every grievance. War is to be no more – territorial aggressions unknown – and the advent of the millennium is to be typified by an unbounded exportation of calico!

These are the views which have been lately propounded at Manchester, and the parties are therefore at issue. Cobden has matched himself against Wellington, and Quaker Bright has volunteered to be his bottle-holder. We really wish that it had been permitted us to approach the argument without mingling with it any asperity. But this is now totally out of the question. The disgusting and vulgar language which Mr Cobden has thought fit to use towards the greatest historical character of the age – the low-minded scurrility which pervades the whole of his egotistical discourse, – put him beyond the pale of conventional courtesy, or even of dignified rebuke. The man who could stand up in his place – no matter what audience was before him – stigmatise the Duke of Wellington as being in his old age a whetter and fomenter of discord, and finally insinuate dotage as the only intelligible excuse, deserves, if there is a spark of national feeling left, to be publicly pilloried throughout Britain. "Would it not," says this disloyal prater, "have been a better employment for him to have been preaching forgiveness for, and oblivion of the past, than in reviving the recollection of Toulon, Paris, and Waterloo?" Forgiveness! and for what? For having vindicated the rights of the nations, terminated the insatiable career of Napoleon's rapine, and restored to us that peace which he is still desirous to preserve by maintaining Britain invulnerable, secure, and free!

But let us pass from a matter so deeply discreditable both to the speaker, and to the audience that applauded his sentiments. Meanly as we think of the latter, we are yet to believe that the next morning brought to many some feelings of compunction and of shame. Not so the former, who, wrapped up in the panoply of his own ridiculous conceit, a would-be Gracchus, must remain a Thersites for ever.

Irrespective of the purse argument, which, as a matter of course, is the chief motive of these gentry, the free-traders attempt to brand the Duke of Wellington with a charge of attempting to raise a hostile feeling between this country and the continental states. The accusation is as false as it is frivolous. The attitude of Britain is not, and never will be, aggressive. She is at this moment in the proud position of the mighty mediator of Europe; and it is to her strong right arm, and not to her powers of producing calico, that she owes that ascendency. Our interest clearly and incontestibly is to maintain peace, but that we cannot hope to maintain, if we abandon the power to enforce it. Among nations as among individuals, the weak cannot hope to prosper in active competition with the strong – nay, they are even in a worse position, because the law will protect individuals, whilst to nations there exists no common Court of Appeal. If we are content to renounce our position, and to give up our foreign possessions – a consummation which the free-trade theorists appear abundantly to desire – if we are to confine ourselves simply to our insular boundaries, and advertise as the workshop of the world – then, indeed, we shall surrender our supremacy, and with it the hope of maintaining peace. Can these men read no lessons from history? Does the sight of what is daily acting around them justify their anticipations of a millennium? What is the real state of the fact? Russia, having absorbed Poland, is now engaged in a territorial war with the Circassians, upon which she has already expended an enormous amount of treasure and of men; and she is prepared for a double sacrifice, if by such means she can gain possession of the passes which are the keys to southern Asia. Austria is hanging upon the skirts of Italy, concentrating her forces upon the frontier, and menacing an immediate invasion. Very lamb-like and pacific has been the conduct of America to Mexico. As for the French, whom Cobden eulogises as the most "affectionate and domesticated race on the face of the earth" – did the man ever hear of the Revolution? – they are notoriously the most aggressive of all the European nations. Did domestic feelings excite them to the conquest of Algeria? Did affection lead them to Tahiti? Was it a mania for free-trade that brought about the Montpensier marriage? Really it is difficult to know for which palm, that of ignorance or effrontery, this Manchester manufacturer is contending. Has he forgot the Joinville letter, which was hailed with such rapture on the other side of the Channel? Was Paris fortified without a purpose? Is he blind to the fact that the peace of Europe at this moment depends upon the life of a man now in his seventy-fifth year? We maintain that there never was a period, at least within our recollection, when the maintenance of general tranquillity throughout Europe was more precarious. And yet, this is the very moment which Mr Cobden selects for a crusade, or rather a tirade, against our military establishments!

Our feelings are any thing but those of dislike towards the "affectionate and domesticated" French. We admire their genius, and read their novels, – and we have a peculiar affection for their wine. In one point alone we agree with Mr Cobden. We still retain the ancient Caledonian predilection for claret in competition with port, and we should be sorry to be deprived of champagne. Still sorrier should we be to lose our annual spring trip to Paris; to be banished from the Boulevards and the Palais Royal, and to enjoy only in memory those delicious dinners at the Rocher de Cancale. We have no wish to run the risk of a compulsory detention at Verdun. Nay, we shall go further, and apprise Mr Cobden, that had our lot been cast a few centuries back, we should in all probability have been fervent maintainers of the ancient bond of alliance between King Achaius of Scotland and the Emperor Charlemagne; and nothing would have given us greater pleasure than to have visited Manchester along with a few thousand lads who swore by Saint Andrew, whilst the partisans of Denis were amusing themselves in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth. But times have changed. We have contracted an alliance with the nation of which Mr Cobden is so creditable a representative; and upon the whole, we are not altogether dissatisfied with the arrangement. We can now look upon the French with an eye undimmed by affection; and we must confess that we have very little, if any, faith in that marvellous change of their character which is sworn to by the Manchester spouters. They may be very excellent fellows, but we would rather not trust them with our keys. The tone and temper of a nation do not alter quite so rapidly as Mr Cobden seems to suppose. The history of Algeria is a very significant hint that the old ideas of the French on the score of conquest are not yet wholly obliterated; and we should rather imagine that they have not quite forgotten their pristine appetite for plunder. They deserve, however, considerable credit for the dexterous manner in which they have thrown dust into the eyes of Mr Cobden. You would think, to hear the man, that he is an inoculated Frenchman. Presume to criticise their character, and his scream is like that of a railway engine. Just hint that you consider them unscrupulous, and our calico-printer overboils "with horror and shame and indignation." We have no doubt that he considers it a great pity that history cannot be annihilated – that is, supposing he has ever condescended to notice any thing so trivial as history. Will he not favour the world with a new version of the French Revolution? We are anxious to hear his grounds for supposing the French to be an "affectionate and domestic people;" and since we are, to fraternise with them altogether, it would be comfortable to know our brethren as they really are. We want to have a true account of the Noyades. Were these really wholesale drownings, or a mere ebullition of national fun? Doubtless, there is much humour – though we have not yet been able to see it – in the clanking of the guillotine; and the expeditions to Moscow and Madrid, with their accompanying tales of rapine and butchery, may possibly be demonstrated by Mr Cobden as instances of a practical joke. Davoust, as the Hamburgians know, was a fine fellow; and so, upon examination, may prove Robespierre and Marat. Perhaps, too, he will come down a little later, and tell us the particulars of the gallant and gentleman-like behaviour of M. Dupetit-Thouars towards Queen Pomare. Or will he undertake to prove that Abd-el-Kader is an infamous scoundrel, utterly beyond the pale or security of national faith and of plighted honour?

It is plain, either that Mr Cobden has been egregiously humbugged by the acute foreigners, or that he has subsided into a state of calm, settled, and imperturbable idiocy. It is too cruel in Bright to parade in such a way his former friend and master, and to quote from his private correspondence. We wonder what is Sir Robert Peel's present opinion of the man whom he chose to bespatter with his praise, and for whose sake he was content to forfeit the elaborate reputation of a life-time. But bad as Cobden may be, he is fairly surpassed in Gallic enthusiasm by the notorious George Thompson, whose patriotism may be gathered from the tone of the following paragraph: – "Why, what were the toasts given at the sixty reform banquets of France? This has been one of their toasts at least, 'Fraternity, liberty, equality.' Let us echo from these shores the shouts that have been raised there, and I am sorry to say, stifled, so far as Paris is concerned, for the banquet did not come off there. Let us send back the echo, fraternity, liberty, equality!" And this pestilential raving has been applauded to the echo in Manchester.

Let us have peace with the French by all means, and with all the world beside; but let us not fall into the despicable and stupid blunder of supposing that human passion and human prejudice, the lust for power, and the cravings of ambition, can ever be eradicated by any system of commercial arrangement. Britain is naturally an object of envy to all the continental states. It is her strength and position which have hitherto maintained the balance of power – and of that the European states are fully and painfully aware. Every step which can tend to weaken the fidelity of her colonies, is regarded with intense interest abroad, and more especially in France. The people of that country envy us for our wealth, and dislike us for our power; and war with Britain, could the French afford it, would at any time find a host of advocates. We are not believers in the probability of such an event, if we keep ourselves reasonably prepared; but the very first relaxation upon our part would inevitably tend to accelerate it. It is quite possible that France may yet have to undergo another dynastic convulsion. The death of Louis Philippe may be the signal for intestine disorder. The Count of Paris is a mere boy, and popularity is not on the side of his uncle and guardian. A powerful party still exists, acknowledging no king save the rightful heir of St Louis; and the fanatical republican section is still strong and virulent. These are things which it would be imprudent to disregard, and of which no man living can venture to predict the result. The death of the Queen of Spain would, according to all appearances, give rise to a rupture with France, and possibly test, within a shorter period than we could have believed, the sufficiency of our national defences. There is at this moment every reason why our real strength and power should be made apparent to the world, and our weakness, where it does exist, immediately remedied and repaired.

Had the Duke of Wellington proposed, like Friar Bacon in Greene's old play,

"To girt fair England with a wall of brass,"

the outcry could not have been greater. An iron wall might perhaps have been rather popular in the mining districts. But his Grace proposes no such thing. He only suggests the propriety of a small augmentation of the regular forces at home, the strengthening of our neglected fortifications, and the gradual reimbodiment of the militia. It is for the British nation, or rather its representatives, to adopt or reject the proposal. Now, it is worth while that we should keep in mind what is our actual disposable force at present.

According to the most recent authorities, the armies of the principal European powers would rank as follows:

The disproportion of force exhibited by this list is sufficiently obvious; but when we descend to particulars, it will in reality be found much greater. Abroad, the majority of the male population are trained to the use of arms: with us it is notoriously the reverse. France, in the course of one week, could materially increase the amount of her regular army; whilst here that would be obviously impossible. Beyond Algeria, France has almost no colonies as stations for her standing force. We have to provide for the East and West Indies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Ceylon, Hong Kong, the Mauritius, Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Islands, and others. The profession of the British soldier is any thing but a sinecure. A great portion of his life must be spent abroad; he may be called upon to undergo the most rapid vicissitudes of climate, to pass from one hemisphere to another in the discharge of his anxious duty. There is no service in the world more trying or severe; and it very ill becomes Mr Cobden, or any of his class, to sneer at that establishment, which is kept up for the direct promotion of our commerce. So large a portion of the territorial surface of the world is nowhere defended at so little cost either of money or of men. Indeed, as recent events have shown, we are but too apt to save the one at the expense of the other. No doubt, if the free-trade policy is carried out to the uttermost – if our colonies are to be thrown away as useless, and our foreign stations dismantled, we might submit to a still further reduction. France will be too happy to receive Gibraltar or Malta from our hands, and will cheerfully free us from the expense of maintaining garrisons there. Let us but make over to that affectionate and domesticated people the keys of the Mediterranean, and we shall soon see with what eagerness they will co-operate in the dissemination of Mr Cobden's free-trade dogmas.

Apart from the colonies, we have a serious difficulty at home. Ireland – that most wretched and ungrateful country, which no experience can improve – is as far from tranquillity as ever. The hard-working population of Britain submitted last year without a murmur to an exorbitant taxation, for the purpose of relieving the distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop. The return is a howl of defiance from the brutal demagogue, and an immediate increase of murder and of crime. Notwithstanding every kind of remedial measure – notwithstanding their exemption, which is an injustice to us, from many of the heaviest burdens of the state – notwithstanding the mistaken policy which fostered their institutions and their schools, the Roman Catholics of Ireland stand out in bad pre-eminence, as the most cold-blooded, unthankful, and cowardly assassins of the world. In order to repress that outrage, which is so villanously rife among them, and which nothing but physical force can restrain from breaking out into open rebellion, we are compelled at all times to keep the largest portion of our remanent disposable force quartered in Ireland. The consequence is, that a mere handful of our standing army is left in Great Britain.

If Mr Cobden should like to see a little terrestrial paradise, in which few birds, with that gaudy plumage which is so offensive to his eyes, can be found, he had better come down to Scotland, and pay us another visit. He is kind enough, we observe, to make himself the mouthpiece of our sentiments upon this matter of the defences; and, certainly, if there be any truth in the adage that we are entitled at least to see what we are paying for, Scotland has no reason to be peculiarly warlike in her sentiments. Mr Cobden will find us quite as affectionate and domesticated a people as the French; and he may rely upon it, that he will not be shocked by any over-blaze of scarlet. From a turbulent, we have gradually settled down to be a quiet race; and as a natural consequence, we share in none of those benefits which are heaped so liberally upon the "persecuted Irish." Our only excitements are a Church squabble, which does not require the interference of the military, but exhausts itself in the public prints; or a bread row, which is always over, long before a detachment can be brought from the nearest station, it may be at the distance of some hundred miles. We are never noticed in Parliament, except to be praised for our good behaviour, or to have some remaining fragment of our national establishments reduced. We pay for an army and a navy which we never see; indeed, of late years the French and Danish flags have been far more frequently displayed upon our coasts than the broad pendant of Great Britain. In many of our counties a soldier is an unknown rarity; and the only drum that has been heard for the last thirty years, is in the peaceable possession of the town-crier. England, we apprehend, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis and of Manchester, is not much better supplied: in short, so far as Britain is concerned, we have a remarkably insufficient force, and one which has been declared by the highest military authority alive, wholly incompetent for our protection in the case of an attempted invasion. Cobden, who has no veneration for successful warriors, having feathered his nest very pleasantly otherwise, admits that he has not the slightest practical knowledge of the trade of war. We therefore demur to his position that this is a question for civilians to determine, and that military and naval men have nothing to do with it. His previous admission involves an inconsistency. He might as well say, that, having no acquaintance whatever with engineering, he is entitled to deliver his opinions in opposition to Walker or Stephenson, on the construction of a skew bridge, or the practicability of boring a tunnel. If one of those vessels in the Tagus, which, according to Cobden, are kept there for the sole purpose of instructing our seamen in the culture of the geranium, was to spring a leak, we should assuredly apply to Jack Chips, the carpenter, to stop it, before invoking the aid of the peripatetic apostle of free-trade. And just so is it with the state of our national defences. Manchester must excuse us, if we prefer the testimony of the Duke of Wellington upon this point to the more dubious experiences of Cobden. It is, of course, quite another question, whether the leak shall be stopped, or the vessel permitted to founder peaceably. Mr Cobden may be heard upon that point, under special reference to the magnitude of the stake which he hazards, but we decline receiving his opinion on the subject of military fortifications. He can no more pronounce a judgement on the adequate state of our defences, than he can parse a paragraph of Xenophon; and therefore, by approaching the subject, he has been guilty of presumption and impertinence.