the genius of barbarism that urged the American colonists to win their independence with the sword, nor can that well be called an uncivilized impulse which has flushed so high the encroaching pride of the United States at the present hour. We are thus driven to admit that we cannot with truth assert that a diminution of war is a characteristic of our epoch; nor that, if some ancient causes of quarrel have disappeared before the progress of civilization, it has imported no new germs of discord into the bosom of nations. Our survey of the past is far from warranting the prediction that all the ends which are for the ultimate benefit of mankind will be henceforward accomplished without bloodshed. Nor does it seem to entitle the warmest advocate of peace to stigmatize a martial spirit as barbarous in every form, and for whatever purpose it is animated. On the other hand, we may glean some reason for the general reflection, that it is often by war itself that future wars are made impossible or improbable, while peace is not unfrequently but the gathering time for hostile elements.1 And the particular observation in reference to our own island lies upon the surface, that, since it has been by the improvements of civilization brought into closer contact with the Continent, the chances of collision with Continental States are multiplied, and military institutions and ideas seem to have arisen among us pari passu with increased proximity to our military neighbours. Again, the extension of our empire far beyond the confines of Europe, has given us enemies and wars in lands of which our mediæval ancestors never heard, and which uncivilized men would have never reached. These inferences are, however, drawn 1 "Ah, we are far from Waterloo! We are not now exhausted and ruined by twenty years of heroic war. We have taken advantage of the twenty years of peace which Providence has given us, to recruit our forces, and stimulate our patriotism. We have an army of 600,000 men; we can also fight at sea. We have built gigantic ships, cased with iron; we have gun-boats; in short, we have a powerful navy, which formerly we had not."-"La Coalition."-Paris, April 16, 1860. confessedly from partial premises, since we have up to this point regarded only one of the many sides which the modern world presents to the eye of the statesman and political philosopher, and especially omitted one of the most conspicuous and important phases of European civilization. Industry and commerce have revolutionised occidental society, and established an economical alliance, as it were, between its members. One of the firmest bases of the feeling of nationality or fellow-citizenship may be traced at bottom, says an eminent traveller, to the "need and aid of each other in their daily life," felt by inhabitants of the same country. Each district, each house, each man has a demand for what another district, house, or man supplies; people are in habitual intercourse or contact of an amicable, or at least pacific character, and reciprocal obligations and conveniences make up the sum and business of existence. But this mutual interdependence now exists, as it is urged, between nation and nation, and all Christendom feels itself to be literally one commonwealth. And, besides the powerful interests altogether opposed to war, which have arisen in every state, men's minds are habitually swayed by commonplace and unromantic ideas; and the presiding idea of modern communities, we are told, is the altogether unwarlike one of the acquisition of wealth. Even France is said to afford a conspicuous example of this; and there are several reasons why that country may, with particular propriety, be referred to in connexion with our present topic of inquiry. At this moment the peace of Europe depends mainly upon French policy. France, moreover, boasts, and with reason, of being, as regards the continent of Europe, a representative and missionary country in institutions and ideas. What is of importance here, moreover-in France and over most of the Continent there are wanting some peculiar physical and historical conditions which contribute to make pacific 1 Notes on the Social and Political State of Denmark, by Mr. S. Laing. interests and sentiments unquestionably predominant in Great Britain, the absence of which peculiarities would render any estimate of the prospects of Europe, that might be founded upon a mere extension of the elements of our own social condition, altogether fallacious. On the other hand there are facts, which have grown up with the present generation, "depriving former times of analogy with our own," and obliging us to dispute the logic which infers the character of future international relations from their past type. Eight years before his arguments were sanctioned by a Treaty of Commerce, Mr. Cobden drew public attention to new features of the industrial economy of the world, surely calculated, in his opinion, to render a military policy uncongenial to the great mass of the French people, and a rupture with Great Britain particularly improbable. Those arguments are of course now entitled to additional weight, but they could hardly be more forcibly expressed by Mr. Cobden himself at the present moment than they were in a remarkable pamphlet which he published the year before the Russian War, from which we reproduce the following passage : I come to the really solid guarantee "which France has given for a desire to preserve peace with England. As a "manufacturing country France stands second only to England in the amount "of her productions and the value of "her exports; but the most important "fact in its bearings on the question "before us is that she is more dependent “than England upon the importation of "the raw materials of her industry; " and it is obvious how much this must "place her at the mercy of a Power 'having the command over her at sea. "This dependence upon foreigners ex"tends even to those right arms of peace, 66 as well as of war, coal and iron. "The coal imported into France in "1792, the year before the war, amounted "to 80,000 tons only. In 1851, her 'importation of coal and coke reached "the prodigious quantity of 2,841,900 44 "tons. 66 66 In the article of iron we have "another illustration to the same effect. "In 1792 pig iron does not figure in "the French tariff. In 1851 the importation of pig iron amounted to 33,700 tons. The point to which I "wish to draw attention is that so 'large a quantity of this prime necessary of life of every industry is im"ported from abroad; and in propor"tion as the quantity for which she is "thus dependent upon foreigners has "increased since 1792, in the same "ratio has France given a security to keep the peace. "Whilst governments are preparing "for war, all the tendencies of the age are in the opposite direction; but "that which most loudly and con"stantly thunders in the ears of em perors, kings, and parliaments, the "stern command, 'You shall not break "the peace,' is the multitude which in every country subsists upon the produce of labour applied to materials brought from abroad. It is the gigantic growth "which this manufacturing system has "attained that deprives former times "of any analogy with our own, and is "fast depriving of all reality those pedantic displays of diplomacy, and "those traditional demonstrations of "armed force, upon which peace or war "formerly depended." 1 We have quoted Mr. Cobden's principal argument, that a war with a state possessing, as Great Britain does, a superior navy, would ruin the staple manufactures of France; but he has also contended that a great military expenditure would entail burdens intolerable to the French people. If it be replied to this latter argument that Government loans produce no immediate or sensible pressure, and are rather popular measures, good authority is not wanting for the rejoinder that this State mine has been so freely worked by French financiers that it must be pretty nearly exhausted-the public debt of France having grown from £134,184,176, in 1818, to £301,662,148 11793 and 1853." By Richard Cobden, M.P. Ridgway. in 1858.2 To this it is added, that, while the Government has become yearly more embarrassed, the nation has become richer, more comfortable, and less ready for military life and pay; and that the very investments which have been so largely made by all classes in the French funds have arrayed interests proportionately strong against any course of public action calculated to depreciate greatly the value of their securities. In short, we are told that the French Emperor is too poor, and that the French people are too rich, for war. These are considerations which deserve much attention; but they are, it seems to us, insufficient to prove that France has passed out of the military into the industrial stage of national development, or that its economical condition is such as to render war very distasteful to the French nation, as a nation; especially as one which endures in time of peace, with the utmost cheerfulness, one of the heaviest inflictions of a great and protracted war. For if we reflect upon the amount of wealth and industrial power withdrawn from production to sustain an army of 600,000 soldiers, besides an enormous fleet, we cannot but admit that this wonderful people bears, not only with constancy, but with pride, one of the chief economical evils of hostilities on a gigantic scale, and that this conspicuous feature of French society suffices to characterise it as warlike and wasteful, rather than as prudent and pacific. The immense increase of the national debt of France in the last forty years, if it shows that the fund of loanable capital has been largely trenched on, shows also the facility with which this financial engine has been worked hitherto; while the admitted augmentation of the general wealth of the people. appears to contain an implicit answer to any conjecture that their capacity to lend has been nearly exhausted. Nor is it immaterial to observe, that the debt of France has been contracted mainly for military purposes,2 that it has been considerably added to by the Emperor 1 Economist, November 26, 1859. 2 Tooke's History of Prices, vi. pp. 7 and 13. for actual war, and that his popularity appears to be now much greater than at his accession, in a large measure in consequence of the manner in which he has employed the loans he has raised. We have, indeed, only to recollect the amount of debt incurred by our own Government in the last war with France, and the opinion entertained by the highest authorities of its overwhelming magnitude when it was but a seventh of the sum it afterwards reached, to see the fallacy of prophecies of peace based upon the supposition of the impossibility of a country in the condition of France plunging into a great contest, and emerging from it without ruin. Moscow and Waterloo have been followed by Sebastopol and Solferino; and of disasters befalling his country from a foreign enemy the Frenchman is, we fear, inclined to repeat : "Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit: "Cum laude victorem, geretque Neither can we put unreserved confi- EXPORTS FROM FRANCE.1 (Expressed in millions sterling and tenths.) Mill. sterl. To England United States Sardinia 11 2 7 3 50 27 20 19 10 46 other countries and places 12 5 IMPORTS INTO FRANCE. (Expressed in millions sterling and tenths.) Mill. sterl Sardinia 4 1 Switzerland 1 4 46 other countries and places 13 5 1 Tooke's History of Prices, vi. 652-3. It will be seen from this table that the French exports to England are larger than to any other country, and the imports from England second only to those from America. When this state of facts is taken in connexion with the common sentiments of the French towards the English, on the one hand, and towards those nations, on the other, with which their trade is comparatively insignificant-as, for example, the Russians, Spaniards, and Italians-we are led to suspect some great fallacy in a theory which presumes that national friendships and animosities, and international relations and differences, are adjusted mainly by reference to a sliding scale of exports and imports; and we are warned to seek for some other indications and guarantees of a lasting alliance. Again, we may observe, that the European trade of France with Belgium ranks next in importance to that with England. Now, when it is suggested that France depends upon importation for those prime necessaries of both war and peace, iron and coal, and that this fact, above all others, affords security against French aggression, the reminiscence can hardly fail to excite some inauspicious recollections. Belgium is almost traversed from west to east by beds of coal, from which, in 1850, nearly six million tons were extracted; and in the same year the Belgian mines yielded 472,883 tons of iron. Give Belgium then to France, or rather let France take Belgium, and she does not want English coal and iron in time of war for her steam navy and ordnance. Is it towards commercial or warlike enterprise-towards the annexation of the adjoining land of coal and iron, or peace with all her neighbours that the mind of the French is likely to be tempted by this consideration? Which policy would best consort with some of their longest treasured aspirations, and some of their latest anticipations? Last year a pamphlet, entitled "L'Avenir de l'Europe," passed through several editions in Paris. The future sketched for his country by the writer may be conjectured from the following No. 7.-VOL. II. passage:- "De même que nous décla"rons la Hollande puissance germanique, "de même aussi n'hésitons-nous pas à "regarder la Belgique comme française. "Elle vit par nous, et sans la pusillani"mité du dernier roi des Français, "l'assimilation serait complète depuis "1830." Perhaps this allusion to the year 1830 may derive illustration from the inspirations of a more celebrated politician. Among the works of Napoleon III. there is a fragment, entitled "Peace or War," which expresses a very decided opinion upon the policy which became the Sovereign of France in 1830, and by implication upon the policy which becomes its Sovereign in 1860, or "whenever moral force is in its favour." It is in these terms:-"All upright men, all firm and just minds agree, "that after 1830 only two courses were open to France,-a proud and lofty one, the result of which might be war; 66 66 or a humble one, but which would "reward humility by granting to France "all the advantages which peace engen"ders and brings forth. Our opinion "has always been, that in spite of all its "dangers, a grand and bold policy was "the only one which became our country and in 1830, when moral "force was in our favour, France might "easily have regained the rank which is "hers by right. : It is not out of place, perhaps, to remark here that the hope of a meek and quiet, but remunerative, policy on the part of France-rather than one grand and bold but perilous-which Mr. Cobden had some reason to form in 1853 from the nature and extent of the maritime commerce of France, has since lost its foundation by a change in the maritime laws of war brought about by Napoleon III. To have crippled by hostilities with a superior naval power the sale of manufactures to the value of 50,000,000l. and interrupted the importation of more than 40,000,000. worth of the materials of French industry, might well have seemed a risk too prodigious even for a sovereign with magnificent ideas to encounter. Butnot to speak of the efforts made by that G Sovereign to place France without a superior on the seas-there is, since the Russian War and the Treaty of Paris, nothing which France imports from foreign shores which she could not continue to receive during a war with England in neutral vessels. Even a blockade of the whole French coast would only send the cargoes round by the Scheldt and the Gulf of Genoa; and to whatever extent it were really successful in obstructing neutral trade, it would tend, on peace principles themselves, to make America, Sardinia, Spain, Russia, and Turkey the enemies of the blockading power, in the ratio of the intercept of imports. It is by no means intended by these observations to attenuate the truism that the material interests of France would counsel a pacific policy on the part of its Government, but only to show that they do not present an insuperable obstacle to a warlike one, even against ourselves, and therefore do not relieve us of the barbarous onus of defensive preparations, or afford us much security that no temptation to achieve distinction by the sword could be strong enough to divert our powerful neighbours from the loom and the spade. In truth, it is no original discovery of our era that the commercial demands of France and England make them natural allies. It was seen with perfect clearness by that statesman who led them into a conflict during which, on each side of the Channel, infants grew to manhood, seldom hearing of an overture for peace, and personally unacquainted with any human world but one of perpetual war. When laying before Parliament the Treaty of Commerce of 1786, Mr. Pitt expressed a confident hope that the time was now come when those two countries which had hitherto acted as if intended for the destruction of each other would justify the order of the "universe, and show that they were "better calculated for friendly inter66 course and mutual benevolence." That generous confidence was so soon and signally frustrated, not because of the blindness of both nations to the advantages of trade, but because men are sometimes disposed to exchange blows rather than benefits, and because they have passions, affections, and aspirations both higher and lower than the love of gold or goods. Still, in 1860, the fiery element of war burns ardently in France, because the desire of wealth is not the one ruling thought which moulds the currents of the national will. There, at least, the economical impulse is not paramount over every other, and the social world does not take all its laws from the industrial; of which in politics we find an example in the insignificance of the bourgeoisie, and, in common life, in the preference of the public taste for the ornamental rather than the useful. There are thinkers who not only speculate upon the future of our own country from a purely English point of view, and take into account in their predictions of its destinies no forces save those visibly in action in ordinary times inside our island shores, but who measure the prospects of the whole human race according to principles which would be valid only if every people had an English history, climate, geographical position, and physical and moral constitution. Yet, in fact, some of the proximate dangers of war arise from the fact that England is the active centre of principles which, were all other countries similarly conditioned, would indeed be favourable to the maintenance of international amity, but which, being dominant in Britain almost alone, come sometimes into violent collision with the elements of national life that are combined elsewhere. The mechanical and commercial conditions common to the modern civilized world have, in many respects, operated but little below the surface to modify diversities created by nature and descent, and betrayed even in the ordinary round of life. The likeness between the AngloSaxon and the Gaul of the nineteenth century lies on the outside; but in sympathies and ideas, in heart and soul, in the inner moral life, they differ funda |