HOW TO RECKON " PROGRESS."
GENERAL CANROBERT gives his testimonial to the fine condition of the English army : the Commissariat now works admirably, and the soldier can fight. It is a grand improvement; and Lord Panmure promises to perform what the Duke of Wellington would have called the song of triumph, or " cock-a-doodle-doo " in response to Lord Ellenborough's gallinaoeous challenge. We ;hall then be told of the immense progress made since the half of a British army was sacrificed in the experimental proof that our departments required mending. One kind of argument is not to be denied in the facts. The same criticism that is levelled at the civil departments now was launched at the civil departments during the Peninsular war. The Duke of Wellington and his officers even then complained that they could not get supplies either of food or ammunition. Admiral Berkeley urged the Commissary-General to supply 300 mules, but, mould not get him to stir. There are passages in the Buctkingham. Memoirs which read like extracts from the papers of the last few months. Sir Arthur Wellesley's letters were "found to make out an indifferent ease for him " ; and his " talents " were the subject of a sneer, in language which Lord Raglan must peruse with pe- culiar relish. We lately tried the medical improvements which a Guthrie urged upon the Government; in these days we have rifles, which Wellington refused to sanction ; and with modern appliances we have at last placed upon the field an army in fine condition,— wanting, however, the experiences of the Peninsula and the Ne- therlands, and perchance a Wellington or a Pieton here and there to direct the movements. Still, it is immense "progress" that we boast since the days when George the Third was King. Yet greater progress might be established. The siege of Troy lasted ten years, and we have not yet got quite to the tenth of that period. The hollow horse was the grand invention of that remote time ; and we can exhibit a railway, though the trains do not yet take their departure from Balaklava for an intramural station di- rect, as the hollow horse did. They had bows and arrows; we have the last new pattern of cannon. Take the Troy standard, and a still vaster progress might be shown : inflict, you can always make out progress if you choose your standard retrospectively.
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