19 NOVEMBER 1859, Page 12

THE TRUE FOUNDATIONS OF NATIONAL DEFENCE. A. SOUND system of

national defence should be built up on founda- tiobs lying deep in national habits and institutions. It is for despotic Governments to recruit their standing armies and militia by conscriptions and coercive laws; a free people should find me- thods of raising and recruiting a defensive force that would be in harmony with the constitutional principles by which they are governed in all other matters. The despotic system, while it upholds the despot, tends to give the military element undue strength, thus risking the internal peace of a state ; and reduces the chances of successful resistance to an invasion, because it stakes all on one throw. The constitutional system on the other hand, is not required to support the Government,—that is effected by a civil process. It does not place internal order in peril, because it does not exalt the professional soldier into an arbiter of power, and it augments the chances of resistance to an invasion, because it not only provides a nucleus of solid strength in a regu- lar army subordinate to the civil power, but provides at the same time a stout support to that army in a well-ordered and well- train. d militia, and a practically inexhaustible reserve in the able- bodied youth of the nation, who, in the case supposed, would have voluntarily acquired military habits and a knowledge of the use of arms.

Somewhat late, but, let us hope, not too late, the British nation is giving scope to the full operation of the constitutional, as op- posed to the despotic principle of defence. Our standing army IB small compared with those of the military monarchies. But it is of good quality and duly subordinate to the civil power. Our militia has been hitherto managed on false principles, and perverted from its true purpose as an essentially defensive force, into a "nursery for the Line." This may be easily accounted for. Long in abeyance the militia was raised in 1852 on the new principle of voluntary enlistment. The Russo-Turkish war soon followed ; men were wanted at all costs; and instead of raising them by bounties, the half-organized militia regiments were torn in pieces to supply the gaps in the regular army. They then ceased to be a purely defensive force, and became so many bad &ph battalions. With the peace a trade in bounties arose, singularly facilitated by the slovenly mode of recruiting for the militia; a mode having its origin in the feeble conception of the functions of a militia force entertained by those who revived the institution. These are evils which may be rooted out by recur- ring to the original design and intention of a militia, and by making it again a purely defensive and mainly local force. Rightly constituted it should not clash with the Line, and the Line, while receiving adventurous young men who had found their way into the militia, should be forced to rely upon its own resources, and not be permitted to make wholesale and systematic draughts from the militia.

We have also begun to raise Volunteers, or rather to allow volunteers to raise themselves. This is only a recurrence to old constitutional forms. It promises to furnish a vast reserve for the standing army and the standing militia, and will have the additional advantage of bringing back the people of these islands to the habits and practices of their forefathers, and of providing a means whereby the rising manhood of Britain may develop some- thing of that robustness of constitution and activity of body, which their forefathers possessed, and which the present genera- tion may transmit to their progeny. This constitutes the double worth of volunteer riflemen as an institution ;—that they will provide securities for the present, and leave a handsome legacy to the future.

In naval matters we seem to be on the eve of acquiring a standing navy, and of applying to seamen the principles of ser- vice so successful with the land. forces. The continuous service men are an approach towards a standing navy, a more necessary institution even than a standing army, yet one the merit of which we are only now beginning to see. The new force—the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve—to be raised next year, is really a maritime militia, essentially defensive in its original design, but of course legitimately available for offensive war, since offence constitutes the merit of the naval art. While defensive troops must be kept in the place to be defended, a ship can search out its enemies in their own ports and waters as well as on the high seas, and defend our coast better by keeping the enemy at a dis- tance, than by waiting to be attacked at home. The Naval Vo- lunteers will, therefore, be a mobile maritime militia, retained to facilitate the manning of the navy, but based on voluntary en- listment and voluntary service, not on a conscription.

So far all well. It only remains to give the amplest and sound- est development to the three kinds of forces to be employed on shore, and the two kinds employed at sea. We must have no more of that pooh-poohing of patriotic proposals for which the Lord-Lieutenant of Kent, and, it is whispered, several other Lords-Lieutenant have been conspicuous. To be Lord-Lieutenant is a high privilege no doubt, but some steps should be taken by Government to see that the privileged person does not abuse the power entailed by his position, and seek to frustrate a national

movement, because, to his little mind and purblind vision, it wears the appearance of a "crude idea." A -Lieutenant is not to be the judge of the crudity or maturity of such ideas. He is the subject and servant of the Queen, and when her Majesty, through her responsible advisers, calls for volunteers, it is the duty of a Lord-Lieutenant to promote and not to obstruct the ac- complishment of her Majesty's wishes. Surely in so grave a matter a Lord-Lieutenant who proves to be obstructive should be removed from a post whose duties he misapprehends.

In order to place our military institutions on a firm basis, we must carry them lower down than they have yet been carried. We must begin at the beginning ; we must plant their roots in the habits of the people. Those famous archers, our ancestors were taught to use the bow from the age of six ; and constant practice at the butt made them pull strongly and shoot with deadly aim. Thus eye and muscle were trained together from youth up to manhood, and the yeomen of England became renowned as the finest infantry in Europe. We cannot train our children to use the rifle from the age of six, but we could train them to use the bow, to become experts in every simple military evolution strong and swift runners' hardy in limb, true of eye, gallant in bearing. Into every school the pensioner or the drill sergeant, and by-and- bye the accomplished volunteer might find his way and exercise his profession to the incalculable benefit, physically and spiritu- ally, of the youth of Britain; while on the sea coast there might be naval drill in some craft supplied from that crowd of ships laid up in ordinary, which have never been and never will be in com- mission. Thus, not only without detriment to their intellectual training, but with positive advantages attending it, the physical power of this nation might be increased tenfold, and those habits, which are essential to a sound defensive foroe, might be once more established in Britain. Thus from our national schools would come forth prepared recruits for the Line and the Militia, and from other schools, prepared recruits for our Volunteer Rifles, our Yeomanry, and Volunteer Artillery, our Navy and our Naval Volunteer Reserve. In due time we might hope to see Oxford and Cambridge giving certificates for proficiency in the elements of the military art, and many schoolmasters and teachers able to drill their little hosts, and to relieve the tedium of that operation by imparting to it the life and spirit of the playground. Thus would be provided a new race of town populations who would not permit their confinement in towns to deprive them of an useful and pleasant physical exercise; and thus that weariness, which leads to a craving for nervous excitement, would be rooted out, and we should be a healthier, a happier, and a manlier people, as well as a people whose home no foreign power, despot or free, would dare even to dream of invading.