The Express.
London, England, 1862-07-04 00:00:00

HIGH WATTS AT LOMB°, BRIDGE.

THIS DZiliiiin7l;66 66 256 r Afternoon, 66. 5016.
To-iscasow—liarning, 76. 1616..... afternoon. Th. 37k.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 4.

Tax House of Commons has debated for two
years on the question of the best means of defend-
ing the country from attack, and at this moment
it is apparently as far from a conclusion as ever.
We beg, therefore, to offer a suggestion by the
adoption of which a good deal of time and talk
might be prevented from running to waste. Our
proposal is simply that Government should begin
at the beginning, and should issue a commission for
inquiring into the possible means of attacking this
country. It certainly needs no demonstration that
this question lies at the very root of all our p
parations for defence, and it is equally obvious that
it is one upon which Parliament and the Govern.
ment have no definite ideas at all. Now the
great virtue of a commission is, that in lieu of the
Cossack warfare of individual assertion it gives
us the matured and weighty convictions of skilled
experience for our battle-field. Take, for instance,
the suggestion by which Lord Pat.xxasrox, our most
distinguished amateur tactician—if, indeed, he who

announces that he has specially studied the sub-
ject for twelve years is not entitled to a higher
name than that of amateur—won a triumph for the
Fortifications Bill on Monday evening. It had
been argued, his Lordship said, that we are safe
from any attack, because an attack could come
from only two places, Brest and Cherbourg, and
these might be shut by blockade ; but, he would
ask, were there not also Toulon and Lorient from
which a hostile fleet might sail for our shores
Now, it certainly would be desirable to know
whether, in the opinion of our own or of foreign
naval men, Toulon and Lorient form important bases
of operation for a descent on England ; because
if so we must materially modify our judgmei t
as to the possibility of despatching a fleet of fiat.
bottomed transports across the Bay of Biscay.
Or, again, take his Lordship's assertion on •
former occasion that the French expedition to
Italy showed how easily troops might be sent by
sea to disembark on a foreign shore. Un-
doubtedly it would be most important if this
assertion should be endorsed by a Royal Commis-
sion; because if it were we should be in a position
to ascertain whether the great continental masters
of the art of war consider that the successful
landing of an army at the port of an ally is a
precedent quite sufficient to justify the throwing
of troops on the beach of a hostile country, where
twenty thousand men under arms are within an
hour by rail of the spot. So, too, we should learn
whether the idea which Sir G. Law's on Monday
propounded, that wooden transports are as useful
and available as ever, because they may be con-
voyed by iron ships of war, is entirely consistent
with the recent experience which has taught us
that iron ships can spare a few shells to sink or
blow up a wooden one, even when engaged with
iron ships themselves. But we nee d not dilate
upon the advantages which our suggestion in every
way offers. It is quite clear that be:ore consider-
ing how we should defend Portadown-hill or the
heights above Plymouth, we ought to have some
notion of whether it would ever enter into an
enemy's head to attack them ; and this is precisely
what we have, as yet, never turned our minds to
inquire.

Sir G. Lzwis, indeed, who has at length come
down among men from the serene abstractions of
celestial philosophy, tells us that we are now in
the right way for defene'ng the country. "Because,"
he asks, " what is the country I The country is
" made up of those places which are wog easily
" attacked, and in which the most valuable property
" —those means and instruments which are most
" efficient for defence are to be found. Those places
" are our naval arsenals." This satisfactory defini-
tion of " what is the country," is obviously derived
from the mathematical axiom that " the whole is
"made up of all its parts." But for our presert pur-
poses the definition is open to the objection of
being more elegant than useful ; for it assumes the
very point which is in dispute. Are t 1,43 marina/a
the places most easily attacked, or are they, in-
deed, open to attack at all t Nothing, of course,
is simpler than to adopt the system of Government,
and of the Defence Commissioner., and to say—
Supposing a foreign force established in this coun-
try, could the arsenals hold out t But then we
still want to know bow the foreign force is to get
established ; and on this the Commission, as it
was not appointed to consider but was told to as-
sume that case, entrenches Reel in the
most elementary generalities. Now, it so happens,
that Sir JOHN BURGOYNE, who is certainly our
most distinguished authority on such a subject,
WI/ us that it is the moat difficult thing in the
world to effect a landing of troops if it is resisted ;
that he only knows one instance, that of Egypt, in
which it was done, and there it was under excep-
tionably favourable circumstances ; and that the
French and English, with all their absolute com-
mand of the sea and all the power of steam,
could never have disembarked their 50,000 men
at Old Fort if the beach had been defended by but
2,000 Russians with a few light pieces of artil-
lery. Here, then, is a erect conflict of authority
between Sir G. Lewis and Sir Jonx Buzoorxx ;
and the puzzle is increased by Sir G. Lawn and
Lord Euxinurrott telling us that this is a case in
which we are bound to yield to authority.
Can anything more be requisite to prove that
all these are questions which we civilians must
decide for ourselves, and that we cannot and dare
not accept their solution on the faith of mere
" authority " I Those who ask us to surrender
our reason before the opinions of a few military
and naval officers, as if they were infallible, fall
into the old error of forgetting that we must first
use our reason to ascertain whether they are in-

fallible or not. We in this country are not in the r
habit of accepting infallibility in any profession
as a dogma. We exercise cor inherent right of
reason to try the spirits, and neither give to
clergymen, to lawyers, nor to scientific men,
a blind submission, merely because they
belong to professions to which we do not.
The tendency of our constitution, indeed, is rather
in the very opposite direction. It is a lawyer, and
not a clergyman, who decides for us what is the
faith of our Church ; it is to English judges
that we commit the final determination of Scottish,
Irish, and Colonial appeals; our juries inquire
every day into questions depending on science
alone. Parliament does not refer to the Inns of
Court as to the proper reform of the law; and it is
the House of Commons, and not the Admiralty or
the Horse Guards, that fixes the strength of the
forces needful for our safety. It would therefore
be a mere absurdity to tell us that we must accept
• certain measure of fortifications on the dictation
of military men, even if they were unanimous,
for our common sense would still have
to sit in judgment upon the conclusions of
prejudiced technicality. But when military and
naval men are not unanimous, when we find Royal
Commissioners diametrically opposed to the pro-
fessional witnesses whom they examine, when we
find new circumstances constantly arising _ which

overturn all prior received doctrines, and when
we find the distinguished amateur, who bids us
defer to authority, himself setting at nought the
l•ighest authority that exists, what course is open
to us but to take the decision into our own hands,
and to say, Srst of all, that we must have more
time, more inquiry, and more deliberation ere we
can decide 1 And for this at least we have the
comfort o: knowing that we have time, for others
are puzzled as we are, and while we pause over
our resources of defence, they are only too glad to
be allowed to proceed slowly with their measures
of possible attack.