WELLINGTON ON THE DEFENCELESS STATE OF OUR FRONTIER.
Is it certain that this country will never again be engaged in war? The question is one which, for many reasons, demands an explicit and positive answer. If it cannot be answered in the negative, it is then a truism that every additional month of peace brings us nearer to war. Is it certain that our own country will not be attacked—that war will not be brought upon our own territory ? Many reasons forbid a certain negative. Our country is rich, and very vulnerable. An old warning on the defenceless state of our coasts, from the highest military authority in Europe, has just been revived. The existence of a letter from the Duke of. Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne, entering very fully into the subject, has been hinted at before • but that letter has this week been publicly described by a well-known correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, whose communications are signed " P." We extract the descriptive passage-
" His theme is the condition of this country as regards invasion; and his state- ments may make the stoutest heart tremble. He enters into every detail; he names, from personal observation, the most likely places for debarkation; he proves the ease with which it might be effected; he displays the nullity of our means of defence. We have no militia, very few and very distant regulars—from 9,000 to 10,000 alone available at home—little artillery, no arms in store. He says, with infinite pathos, I am now bordering on seventy-seven years of age, passed in honour. I hope the Almighty may protect mefrom being a witness of the tragedy I cannot persuade my contemporaries to avert.' "He afterwards proceeds to demand means, the most moderate; and with them be undertakes to secure us. His terms are 150,000 militia, and some 10,000 or 12,000 additional soldiers of the line."
We have followed a corrected version of the text, which is more emphatic in its phrase; but from the original version is to be collected the additional fact that the Duke had submitted his plan of defence " to three Ministers," [Premiers, we presume,] " in vain."
Why in vain ? Not because any Ministry can be content with the state of the national defences, but because they have not had the zeal to undertakethe trouble of arranging with Parliament the matter of coat ; perhaps also because they have not been able to picture to themselves what the Duke means by "the tragedy"— taught to him, however, by no exercise of fancy, but by horrible experience of the reality in other lands.
But are we all so bare of that intellectual function that we can- not construe the words ? Because our generation has not wit- nessed an invasion of English homes, are we quite incapable of conceiving such an event ? Do we not know what it implies ? An accident, a word, a squabble between sailors or fishermen, might precipitate war; a diplomatic technicality might dictate a "demonstration." If a host of pulse-fed Russians or French troops were poured into Sussex or Bent, would the devastation of oar-corn-fields, the waste of our orchards and hop-grounds, be the worst that we should have to deplore ? Would the plunder of "the City" itself be the thing that we should dread ? We should scarcely think of it, in comparison. Statesmen might, military officers might—it would be their business ; but we, the people of England, should be thinking of something more stirring than that. Military officers might .gain a victory, and the bells might ring after it. But what might happen in the interval ? Do not some of us know what it is for a people to have an alien soldiery turned loose among its homes? Do we not know what it might be for the men of a household to stand armed within the door, the women sent to inner rooms and hiding-places—to have the door forced in—the men to be vanquished—the women discovered ? Do not men prefer to be trampled down and die before they know what happens in such adventures? Are we to remain content, knowing that these things may be, in Brighton or Hastings, in Canterbury or Horsham, nay in London—in Camberwell or Islington, in Belgrave Square or Sussex Gardens ? There is indeed no security against such a visitation. This is not the most national view of the subject : we might point to the enormous waste and destruction of our substantial wealth, to the utter overturn of all existing arrangements, to the want and misery which must remain in the track of an invading army; we might point to the chance that an invading force from the. Continent would be swelledly recruits from the. other side—from
Ireland—by practical Repealers : but these views of the subject must already have been before our statesmen; and, it seems, they have been unavailing to incite action. Possibly the personal view may move us to more purpose. We should not be van- quished—we should repel the invader—the spirit: is still in the English heart, the heart is in the blow.; but a. people are not an army, and when an army is suffered to oome in,among the peo-
ple, the worst things happen before that army, is-expelled again. Now the fact is indisputable, that an army. may enter England,
and march to its centre, unchecked by any efficient antagonist. We could not even retaliate easily or effectually : if France, for instance, were our assailant, Paris is cased with forts, and alr France is in military " attention." •
This has not yet happened—nothing like it since the last civil war : it will not happen again—till next time. It never would happen, indeed; if we took steps to render it impossible : but we have not taken the steps—our Ministers have not heart for the- subject. There is not one, in any party, that will take up this home question, and settle it. Yes, there is one—the venerable. Captain ; but he is as unheeded as Laocoon-
"Hen ! si fats dam, si mens non lava futsset, Trojaque mine stares Priamique arx sate manerea! "
A brutish disregard of the future awaits on the self-satisfied, spirit of our day, which can deal with no ideas but such as have tangible objects to suggest them—money gains, or sen- sual gratifications. We abdicate part of our faculties, and lay them at the feet of the narrow-minded and dull, content to think no farther than they can think, to imagine nothing but what they can know, to foresee nothing but what they can understand on gross palpable proof. We are paying the penalty of this blindness in past times. For temporary objects that we now despise, we expended enormous sums in war, regard- less of the cost to ourselves ; and we are still paying, every year, many millions for our improvidence. We are now going to incur- the converse penalty, incurring the risk of ruinous war to save a small present outlay. We have always refused to deal with- the future of Ireland, and the penalty is that we have never- done dealing with an interminable and sanguinary past. It is true again that this penalty is not identical with that which we shall incur by neglecting the future to which the white-haired, veteran so eloquently warns us. It seems that we must know the- actual horrors and devastation of war before we can associate the idea of invasion with the latest metropolitan improvements,, or think it necessary to provide any more certain bulwark than a new Police ! This dulness to the warning, we say, is not court- age, nor " practical " sense, but besotted brutishness.
• See an article on " The Fortifications of Paris Strategetically Considered," Fraser's Magazine for December.
Previous page
