The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-18 00:00:00

the face of the man that offaed it. If this vast amount
and dire reality of work is done for pay, why should
not pay be even more efficacious for the mere child's
play, the game of soldiering, contemplated by the Bill
now in the Commons? If counties and pay will an-
swer the purpose, surely it is a needless exhibition of the
ultima ratio to parade before a peaceful and loyal people
the terrible apparatus of the conscription. The English-
man will ofmn do spontaneously what he could never bo
forced to do, and it is not at all unlikely that many
will refuse to volunteer, merely from the feeling that
they might perhaps be made to serve against their will,
and that they may very likely have to stand in the same
rank with involuntary conscripts, or worse still, with a
low class of substitutes.

After all, it is a question whether the conscription is
any longer possible, and whether the volunteer principle
is not the utmost limit of enlistment in these days. How
are we to keep hold of the militia conscript in the long in-
tervals of service? Mr. Cobden possibly makes out our
labourers and artisans to be worse than they are, when
he says that they will volunteer for the -sake of the
bounty, and then invest the money in a passage to the
States; but we will not answer for the loyal of men who
may conceive themselves the victims of an unjust mea-
sure. At all events, if a man is drawn for the militia
and hates the service, but cannot or will not pay for
a substitute, there is nothing whatever to pre-
vent him from transferring himself, his family, his
property, and his allegiance to another Power.
No writ ne exeat regno will hover over the heads
of the reluctant militiamen during the many months of
freedom that must necessarily intervene between the
closing inspection in autumn and the first drill in sum-
mer. In this country we have no such system of sur-
veillance as there is in France. Here the ballot will be
inefficacious unless the conscript is kept under guard the
whole year. There is nothing to prevent him returning
home the day that he is drawn, selling his furniture by
auction, taking solemn leave of his friends, toad departing
amid the condolence or the congratulations of his neigh-
bours, for any part of the wide earth that he may
think more eligible than his own country under such
circumstances. England is now the easiest place in
the whole world for a man to get out of, as is
evident from the fact of many thousand Germans
and other foreigners coming to England as the most di-
rect, smoootb, and cheap channel to America or any
other transmarine country. Any man, indeed, with 101.
in his pocket may make np his mind after breakfast to
try the valley of the Mississippi, and by walking to the
London Docks may engage a berth, purchase a cem-
plete equipment from some of the neighbouring out-
fitters, find himself at the Noro by teatime, and by 12
P.m., if the wind favours, sailing merrily down the
Channel. What is to hold a people who are fast beeo.!
ming birds of pasersge, alvrayes oil the vvingt ever flitting
and fleeting? No legislation is so injurious as that
which aims at a power which the State does not actually
possess, and can never acquire; but that is the fault
which, as it seems to us, has been deliberately and ob-
stinately committed in this instance.—Times.