The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-04 00:00:00

perfect generalship; and every approach to it is to'
the credit of the commander, while needlessly ex-
posing men is foolhardiness, if it be not military
murder. With :such ideas have a WELLINGTON
and a CLYDE, and all truly great commanders, ever

fough
Then there is the imperial argument ; Mr.
LINDSAY used it ; Mr. BRIGHT used it, of course;
even Mr. OSBORNE did not disdain it. You have
no reason to suspect the Emperor of the FRENCH.
He always carries out your policy—in Italy, in
China, in Syria—as to Savoy and Nice, he
deserved a fee for doing so much for Sardinia ; and
as to coercing Portugal, in defiance of right, of
honour, and of English remonstrance—oh, unluckily,
that was forgotten, and many other little things
were forgotten, too. But did he not say, before
last year, that " the Empire is peace ?" Does he
not withdraw all his naval operations from Cher-
bourg when they are most likely to look hostile ?
Does he not need nearly half-a-million men under
arms, surrounded as he is by States who are ob-
liged, because he does so, to keep armies large in
proportion? Does he not write frank and noble
letters ? And does he not conclude with us gene-
rously one-sided treaties ofcommerce ? What madness
to fortify your dockyards against such an EMPEROR;
—which argument we shall not undertake to refute.
And then there is the Manchester argument. It
will cost money. So, alas, does fire insurance
so does marine insurance ; so do bolts
and bars ; and the police, who try sometimes
at our windows to see whether we have used
them as we ought. But, we fear, orders from the
the War-office for cotton goods are not quite so
large as orders for materials such as Birmingham
and similar worshops manufacture; Manchester's
share in equipping the army and navy is probably
less than that of any other great trade. However,
we do admit the Manchester argument as valid
except against necessity, and most of us think it a
simple necessity that our arsenals should be as
safe as engineering skill can make them. We
regret the millions it may cost ; yet we think
them about as well spent money, as using every
possible precaution td make a Manchester ware-
house fire-proof. As the latter saves annual cost
in the insurance premium—and saves, besides, the
derangement to business caused by a fire—so
attack•proof arsenals save the cost of a large navy,
and the vastly greater cost of encouraging a foe to
attempt the attack.
For one thing, as we have indeed already said,
we ought to be thankful. Those who rejected for
Portsmouth the fortificatipns which would make
a few defenders inside equal to an army Outside,
did not entrench themselves, as they might have
done, behind those forms of the house which would
have enabled them to resist for weeks together. If
their arguments would not convince, they did not
condescend to tactics designed merely to coerce.

In the Augustan age of Rome, as in the Vic-
torian age of England, there were audible from
time to time (so HORACE, among others, has re-
lated), all kinds of sinister prophecies of disaster,
and solemn forewarnings of the general disruption
of the empire dreaded by each more patriotic or
more far-seeing Civis Bomanus. " Barbarus, heu !"
the Roman Lyrist exclaims, one while—(Epode
XVI. Ad .Romanos)—

Barbarus, hen I cineres insistet victor, et urbem,
Eques sonante verberabit ungula."
It is the very prediction heard at intervals
now-a-days, as to that possible advent of that
other " Barbarous Victor" from across the Chan-
nel, who is to trample upon the ashes
of London while leading along its resounding
streets the Chasseurs d'Afrique and the Chasseurs
de Vincennes!
" Quwque carent ventis et solibus ossa Quirini,
Nefas videre I dissipabit insolens."
Is it not the boast again of scattering to winds the
contents of those twin tombs under the dome of
St. Paul's—the bones of NELSON and WELLING-
TON ? A vengeance to be completed, of course, in
the western portions of the capital by ridding the
Triumphal - arch at Hyde-park corner of that
hobgoblin effigy of the Duke, and by un-mastheadin g
the Admiral in Trafalgar-square. It is noticeable,
however, that after the enumeration of these various
prophecies of ill to Rome audible in his time,
HORACE, in this famous Epode of his Ad Romanos,
adds immediately afterwards—
"Forte, quid expediat, communiter, aut melior pars,
Malin carere quteritis laboribus.
.Arulla sit hac potior sententia : &e."
which, familiarly rendered into our homelier
idiom, may be said to signify—" By the way,
the generality, or the better part of you
all, 0 fellow-citizens, will ask with what
precise policy or with what measures it may be
most expedient that those dreaded evils may, be
averted. "—adding in so many words, words that
might really have fallen from the lips of Mr.
BRIGHT nowadays just as well as from the pen of
HORACE in his Epede—" Than what I am going I
to utter, nothing better can possibly be said by any
one—therefore listen I" " Nulla sit hac potior sen-
tentia." That is precisely Mr. BRIGHT'S dogmatism.
(And what we may ask in parenthesis, what is the
origin of all dogmatism, according to LA BRUYERE
what but profound ignorance ? "C'est la profonde
ignorance qui inspire le ton dogmatique.") HORACE
recommends his fellow-countrymen to fly elsewhere

if possible to the fresh fields and pastures new of
Arcadia, by way of evading the calamities impend-
ing over the empire and the capital: Mr. BRIGHT
laughs to scorn all the prophecies, (which pro-
phecies he is nevertheless so careful to enume-
rate), derides the dangers pointed out and
proclaimed by a crowd of Cassandras, and
then recommends us all, in the name of pru-
dence! and of common sense ! ! and of economy ! ! !
to sit down and do nothing whatever. This, re-
member—with a military despotism, armed to the
teeth, upon the opposite shores of the Channel—the

Channel bridged over long since by a steam fleet,
second only to our own—the army there numbering,
according to different computations, a stupendous
total of from 400,000 to 600,000 of the finest
soldiers of the European continent !
_ _

Hv
Everybody who thinks differently from Mr.
BRIGHT—is an ass. Military men especially are
the objects of his peculiar derision upon all matters
relating to (what he himself, of course, is so pro-
foundly versed in) their profession ! The great
Duke of WELLINGTON, he has the matchless inde-
cency and ingratitude—(seeing that Mr. BRIGHT
really is, what at times we can hardly be-
lieve him to be—an Englishman !)—the match-
less indecency and ingratitude to scoff at
as one notoriously, towards the close of his life, a
dotard and a driveller ! If a soldier of more
modest reputation writes (as it is after all not so very
surprising that a soldier should write sometimes)
a pamphlet upon the subject of our national de-
fences, Mr. BRIGHT, with a fine irony, can discover
nothing more sarcastic to say in his regard than to
mention him with the precisest exactitude byhis name
style, and title, as " another gentleman, Lieut.-Col.
VALENTINE BAKER of the 10th Hussars !" There
is a veteran, too, who is indecorously dragged into
notice in the person of General Sir R. GARDNER,
for the purpose of being ridiculed as one who " cer-
tainly had not shone as a statesman and a gover..
nor," -viz., at Gibraltar—Sir R. GARDNAIes gover-