Page images
PDF
EPUB

have attained a complete knowledge of their duty, and giving them greater encouragement to enter and continue in the reserve, especially by restoring to them a prospect of ultimately obtaining pensions, there is little doubt that much progress might by this time have been made in forming a reserve of the desired strength, and so soon as this was accomplished, the active army might safely be reduced to the intended permanent establishment. The refusal to allow the army to be kept for a time above this establishment, and the hasty reduction of its numbers before the reserve had been formed, were the chief errors which have caused the military policy of the late Government to have failed, in spite of its having been based on right principles. Were this great mistake corrected, measures being also taken to promote recruiting, and to check desertion by giving greater prospective advantages to the soldier, our army might soon be put upon a better footing. This, however, is not a fit occasion for discussing the means by which such an improvement might be effected, perhaps at some future time we may revert to the subject.

Such measures as we have referred to could not of course be adopted without an increase of our own military expenditure, though there is good ground for believing that this increase need not be so large as might at first sight be apprehended, since Mr. Holms has shown that no small part of it might be met by cutting down charges now incurred on account of the army without any equivalent benefit. But granting that to improve the army must cost money, this affords no sufficient ground for refusing to attempt it. Fifty years ago there were excellent reasons for objecting to the cost of the army, and for insisting upon a more rigid economy in military expenditure. For a good many years after the peace of 1815 the habits of extravagant expenditure created by a long war carried on with borrowed money continued to prevail, and the army was maintained at needless cost and on a scale not really required by the then state of the world. The pressure of taxation upon the country was also at that time well-nigh intolerable, and the condition of the people urgently required that relief should be given to them. In this state of things a real service was done to the public by those who earnestly strove to enforce a reduction of the national expenditure, and especially in that part of it incurred on account of the army. But circumstances are now entirely altered; a very large amount of useless expenditure, and all the taxes that were really objectionable have been got rid of, those that are still paid pressing very lightly on the people, while even a greater relief than that afforded by the remission of taxation has been given to them by setting free

their industry from the trammels formerly imposed upon it under the name of protection. The consequence is that in the last thirty years there has been an increase which is almost marvellous in the wealth of the nation, so that it need no longer hesitate on the score of expense to adopt whatever measures are really required for its welfare.

But unfortunately rival politicians in chase of popularity have kept up the old cry for economy when it has ceased to be the most pressing want of the country. Strict economy ought undoubtedly to be observed in the public expenditure, but money is not everything to a nation any more than to an individual. Honour and security are certainly not less important than money, and for both it is essential that arrangements should be made by which the nation may be assured of having an army promptly available to meet any probable emergency however suddenly it may arise. Without this England cannot hold her proper place in the world, or even enjoy security at home. It is earnestly to be hoped, and we may even trust that England may never again be compelled, as she was in the beginning of the present century, to take a leading part in a continental war; but it would be idle to deny that circumstances may arise in which her honour and her ultimate security would require her to support against threatened attack, by more than mere remonstrance, nations to which she is bound by treaty or friendship. Not long ago it was at least suggested that Belgium might be called upon to restrain the free expression of opinion in her own territory lest it should disturb the tranquillity of a powerful neighbour. If instead of being dropped this untenable claim had been insisted upon with an intimation that it would be enforced, Belgium would have had a right to look to England for support in resisting it. This support could not with honour have been refused in the face of the treaties by which we are bound, and even if there had been no treaties, it would have been both little to our credit and unwise to withhold it. To acquiesce in hostile measures being adopted against Belgium on the plea that an independent state may justly be called upon to stop the free expression of opinion within its own territories, because this might occasion inconvenience to another, would have tended to establish a principle capable of very dangerous application.

Both in this case and in that we have already referred to of an apprehended rupture between Germany and France, it might have become needful for England to use her utmost efforts to stop proceedings which were believed to be contemplated by Germany. From these examples we may learn how possible it

is that occasions may arise in which this country could not either with honour or safety abstain from endeavouring to prevent acts of aggression from being committed by one European nation on another. But our interference for this purpose would be far more likely to succeed, and far less likely to lead to war, if it were known that in case of need our remonstrance might be supported by arms. And it is a mistake to suppose that the military power we could put forth must necessarily be of small importance, because our army, even with the largest augmentation any English statesman would dream of recommending, would still bear a small proportion to the numbers of continental armies. Enormous as are the hosts that other nations contemplate bringing into the field, it would be found that forty or fifty thousand thoroughly trained and wellequipped British soldiers would be able to throw a very significant weight into the scale in favour of the Power whose cause England might adopt. With a proper reserve there is no reason why this great country should not be able at short notice to bring such a force into the field, and with the power of doing so remonstrances on the part of England against measures she disapproves would carry with them a very different weight from that they now have, when it has been said on high authority that England has 'effaced herself' as a military Power.

To be thus effaced' is, we are persuaded, no more in accordance with the real wishes than with the interest of the nation. There are symptoms that the people are awaking to the perception of the importance of recovering the position and the influence England formerly possessed, and that the time is come when public opinion would support the government if it should have the courage and wisdom to propose well-considered measures for placing our army on such a footing that we may no longer be regarded by our neighbours as a nation that has ceased to have weight in the affairs of the world, and of which the wishes and remonstrances may safely be treated with contemptuous indifference. Though such measures must involve at least a temporary increase of the army estimates, we are convinced that the increase would be heartily approved by Parliament as well as by the country.

ART.

ART. IV.-The Prose Works of William Wordsworth. Edited with Preface, Notes, and Illustrations. By the Rev. Alexander Grosart. In 3 vols. London, 1876.

W

[ocr errors]

́HILE we are obliged to Mr. Grosart for the pains he has taken to collect and arrange the contents of these volumes, we cannot affect to share his surprise that he should have been the first to perform the task. Astonishment at the fact will, we suspect, be confined to the select circle of Wordsworth's admirers' in whose eyes, as Lord Coleridge writes to Mr. Grosart, the very dust of the writings of that very great and noble person is gold.' Within this circle, indeed, the personal worship of Wordsworth has long amounted to a religion, and is now rapidly accumulating a mythology. There are persons to whom Rydal is as Mecca to the Mohammedan, and an unpublished sonnet of Wordsworth as a relic of St. Francis to the Catholic pilgrim. Mr. Grosart, for instance, 'cannot close his preface without expressing his sense of the trust confided to him, and the personal benefit it has been to himself to have been brought so near to WILLIAM WORDSWORTH as he has been in working on this collection of his prose. He felt almost awed as he handled the great and good man's MSS., and found himself behind the screen (as it were) seeing what he had seen, touching what he had touched, knowing what he had known, feeling what he had felt.' The English language is inadequate to express the Editor's enthusiasm. It is a benediction,' he concludes, to the race, among so many fragmentary, and jagged, and imperfect lives, to have one so rounded and completed, so august, and so genuine.' On the other hand, epithets, the reverse of 'benedictory,' are heaped on the heads of those profane friends of Wordsworth who have ventured to view him as a mere mortal author; De Quincey, for example, being called 'a little, alert, self-conscious creature, with the marvellous brain, and more marvellous tongue; a monkey with a man's soul somehow transmigrated into it.'

Did the language of worshippers, like Mr. Grosart, so curiously confounding the qualities of the man and the writer, really represent the national feeling for Wordsworth, the tardy publication of his prose writings would no doubt be matter for surprise. But it does not represent it. With all his rare and genuine qualities, the author of The Prelude' and 'The Excursion' has never been, we think he never will be, popular; and to speak, as Mr. Grosart does, of the millions in the future to whom William Wordsworth will be the grand name of the

[ocr errors]

18th-19th century, and all that Shakespeare and Milton are now,' is to violate alike probability and proportion. Those features which repel the general reader in the Lake poet's verse are all the more pronounced in his prose, because they here appear without that air of mystery and remoteness which metre gives them. The contents of these volumes are classified in three divisions, styled respectively, 'Political,' 'Ethical,' 'Critical;' yet, various and distinct as are the species of essay to which this order points, Wordsworth, whatever be his subject, writes as if he were engaged on but one kind of composition-a sermon. He seems to regard the principles of taste and politics as no less axiomatic than those of morals. Hence, though his political pamphlets possess many remarkable excellencies, his efforts in that kind of writing are usually ineffective. Want of instinct and humour made him unskilful as a rhetorician; he did not understand the passions of his audience, nor was he able to suppress his partiality for his own conclusions, so as to perceive how an object would strike an ordinary mind. He takes up arms, for instance, against Brougham in an election contest; but when he ought to be driving his antagonist out of the field with sarcasm and invective, he reads the freeholders a lecture on the Constitution. His pamphlet on The Convention of Cintra,' abounding as it does in fine passages, studied after the manner of Burke, is spoiled by its air of exaggeration. The writer approaches his theme-a mere particular incident of military diplomacy-as if it contained vast social issues like the French Revolution, and as if it were possible to inflame men's intellects in the same manner as their passions. His indignation at what he considers the folly and want of principle of Wellesley and his lieutenants, knows no bounds; but, in the midst of his invective, he suddenly stops to enter into a cold consideration of the causes that hamper the action of a Constitutional Government in time of war. Excessive self-confidence sometimes betrayed him into serious offences against good breeding. In 1793, at a time when all England experienced a thrill of horror at the murder of Louis XVI., Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published a sermon reflecting on the event; and, as the pamphlet had an extensive sale, it may be supposed to have expressed, not unhappily, the popular feeling of the moment. Wordsworth, in reply, wrote an 'Apology for the French Revolution,' in the form of a letter to the bishop, in which he likens the latter to a drunken man ;' and tells him that he has fallen into the tide of contempt, to be swept down to the Ocean of Oblivion.' Curiously enough,

« PreviousContinue »