THE position of this country, with reference to its foreign relations, is the most extraordinary that ever existed in the world. It may safely be pronounced without a parallel in the whole history of mankind. It is hard to say whether it is most mar- Although, however, this is, beyond vellous considered with reference to all question, the general condition of the moral influence of past effort, or the influential part of our people, and the real weakness arising from pre- though it is the apathy or indifference sent blindness. We are at peace; we of this majority holding power which seem to be secure; all the appliances has so long stamped indecision and of civilised life are at our command; want of foresight on the measures of wealth, unbounded at least as regards Parliament, yet upon a nearer examiterritorial magnates and wealthy mil- nation, it will be found that it is not an lionaires, is around us; every one absolute majority of the whole nation is set on gain, or straining after plea- which has been struck with this judisure; and yet the hand of the spoiler cial blindness, but a part of it only. is ready to wrest it all from us; and, Unfortunately, however, it is a very amidst our feasting and rioting, the large class that has been so affected, handwriting is already to be seen and precisely the class in whom polion the wall which foreshadows our tical power is now vested, and who, doom. But our people are blind to as they return, at present at least, the the warning-they are deaf to the representatives of a majority of the voice of the prophet, prophesy he never seats in the House of Commons, have so clearly. They have yielded to the in effect acquired the government influence of great and long-continued of the whole nation. It is in the prosperity, won by the strenuous boroughs-above all, the manufacefforts of former times. With the turing boroughs-that the belief has usual disposition of mankind to be- spread most widely that war is an lieve in the perpetuity of the present evil which has entirely disappeared order of things, they think they are from the world; that we shall never always to be at peace because they be called on to fight again; that are so now, and have long enjoyed pacific influences and moneyed power that blessing; and flatter themselves will henceforth entirely regulate the that their enjoyments are never to be affairs of nations; and that muskets abridged, nor serious sacrifices re- and cannon, swords and cuirasses, quired of them, because they have so sail of the line and steamers of war, long been blessed with an exemption from the serious national ills of life. Like the human race in the days of the Flood, they will be marrying and giving in marriage when the deluge comes upon them. VOL. LXXII. 1 may be buried beside the bones of the Mammoth and the Mastodon, as relics of a primeval age, which will never return to the sons of men. Strange as it may appear to any one who is either versed in the annals of nations, or has read the book from which they are all taken, the human heart, these ideas are not only common, but, with few exceptions, universal, in our manufacturing towns. Mr. Cobden never expressed an opinion which met with a more cordial response in the breasts of a great majority of his auditors in Free-Trade Hall, Manchester, than when he said, two years ago, that all danger of war had now passed away; that nothing could now withstand commercial interests and the influence of capital; and that our real wisdom would be to sell our ships of the line, disband our troops, dispose of all the stores in our arsenals, and trust entirely to the Peace Congress for the decision of the disputes of nations. If other governments and people could be brought to take the same view of this subject, the doctrines of the Manchester School of politicians would perhaps be well founded, and the world in general, discarding all idea of wars or rumours of wars, might rest in tranquillity, in the well-founded expectation of perpetual and universal peace. But if other nations are not animated with the same ideas—nay, if their warlike propensities are every day increasing in ardour, while ours are declining, our situation, it must be evident to every considerate observer, is daily becoming more alarming. Our wealth, upon which we so much pride ourselves, and to the increase of which we are willing to sacrifice everything, would then become the main source of our weakness-our fame, which alone has hitherto protected us, the greatest increase to our danger. The first would excite cupidity, from the prospect of gratifying it without danger; the second inspire revenge, from the hope of achieving it without disgrace. Now no man can look around him and not see, not only that the chances of war are great, but that they are imminent. The peacemakers have undone the work of their own hands: the ascendancy, even for a brief season, of their political friends, has closed for a century to come the practical application of their principles. The Revolution succeeded in Parisit succeeded in Berlin-it succeeded in Vienna; and what has been the result? Just what, under similar circumstances, might be expected in London, Manchester, or Glasgow. The Revolutionists, among all their professions of love for peace, proved the most warlike of mankind in their deeds; and armaments greater, and wars more bloody, and passions more violent than had ever before arisen, followed immediately the triumph of the self styled apostles of peace! And in what state is Europe, at this moment, four years after the first explosion of the revolutionary volcano by the overthrow of Louis Philippe? Fifteen hundred thousand armed inen are arrayed round the standards of the European sovereigns; the efficient warlike force of the great military nations on the Continent has been doubled; and the military spirit developed in them all to an extent never witnessed since the fall of Napoleon. Such has been the result of the political measures of the peacemakers. If these vast warlike armaments were confined to Continental operations, and destined only for mutual slaughter by the Continental nations, they might be, comparatively speaking, an object of indifference to the British public; and valuable only to the historian, or the distant observer of events, as an example of the inevitable tendency of democratic revolutions to awaken the warlike passions, and postpone, if not prevent, the reign of peace upon the earth. But, unfortunately, this is very far from being the case; and if there is any one thing more certain than another, it is that we ourselves are the principal object of all these armaments, and that we are more immediately threatened with attack than any state on the Continent. The reason is, that we are at once the richest, the most inviting, and the most unprepared. Our immense riches, in great part centred in London in a form susceptible of immediate seizure, both invite attack and hold out the prospect of impunity to |