We have dealt elsewhere with the wave of feeling that
has Swept over the country owing to the production of An English- man's Home at Wyndham's Theatre. Here we should like to give a quotation from Captain St. Loe's pamphlet, "A. Dis- course about Raising Men,"—a pamphlet written by a Whig naval officer about 1695 in opposition to the Tory dislike of applying compulsion to the defence of the country. The Pamphlet deals with the objection to compulsion as a violation of liberty and property, an argument which, its author declares, is popular because "to seem to assert, and talk for Liberty and Property, is always Popular, makes a great Show, and gives a Man an Air, tho' it be nothing to the purpose "1—
"All Englishmen then have, as you say, Gentlemen, a Liberty not to Fight for their Country, and no Body can make 'em do it, unless they, Kind Hearts, should happen to be in a good humour, and offer their Service themselves ; tho' the English Fleet should be sunk, and the Army destroy'd, yet Englishmen may stand still with their Hands in their Pockets and look on, and no Body can make 'era strike a Stroke. This is their Liberty, and. no Body has a Word to say to it ; nay, tho' the Kingdom itself were sure to be lost, our Laws, Liberties, Religion, Government and all with it, yet neither the King nor the Parliament, nor both of them together with all their Laws and all their Authority, can make a man of 'em Fight to prevent it."
Happily we believe Captain St. Los's irony to be out of date. In our opinion, if the electors are fairly and honestly asked the question "what they mean to do about it," they will answer: "We do not believe either in a man's liberty not to fight for his country or in his liberty not to be trained to do his duty to his hearth and home."
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