The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-25 00:00:00

generations of Englishmen have been bound to
their island home; nor, if we may judge by the
gloriods spectacle of Saturday, are they at all
likely to paralyse the energies which the first pro-
spect of any real danger would call into play
amongst our people. No similar movement that has
taken place in Europe since the commencement of
the present century can at all be compared to the
great national arming of which we have just wit-
nessed the first peaceful exhibition in the capital.
The great Volunted movenienti some sixty years
ago, sprung up under the menace of an immediate
invasion of our shores. The great arming of all
Germany in 1813 took place amidst the excitement
and the enthusiasm of an actual struggle ; it aimed
at throwing off the foreign yoke under whicb many
of the fairest provinces and proudest cities of Ger-
many then groaned. But the present Volunteer
movement in England is all the more imposing
from its very calmness. It is emphatically pru-
dential, precautionary, anticipative. The serried
masses of armed men that on Saturday rolled
past their Sovereign, and, at the termination
of the review, rent the air with shouts
of enthusiastic loyalty and devoted patriotism, were
composed of individuals who are sternly preparing
themselves for the work of soldiers, because they
have first, coolly and calmly, formed their conclu-
sions as politicians. They feel that their lot has
been cast at an eventful crisis in the history of the
world ; that, look to what quarter of the horizon
they may, the thunderclouds are seen to be omi-
nously piled up, and the storms threatening ere long
to burst, and, remembering the part which their
country has played in the past annals of the world,
they are resolved that the coming tempest shall not
find it unprepared, or unable to hold its own, even
amidst the shock of battle and the clash of arms.
How utterly. insignificant, when compared with the
national spirit and feeling which the spectacle of
Saturday rivealed, how utterly insignificant are
the questions respecting the relative fitness of this
" noble lord" or that " right hon. gentleman" to hold
the seals of this or the other Secretaryship of State,.
of the special training and peculiar dexterity by
which a diplomatist may contrive to extract a
Cabinet secret or unravel a Court intrigue—nay,
how trivial, beside this great fact, appears even a
considerable extension of the electoral suffrage to
the people ! These are but the accidents of a nation's
prosperity and power; the essentials lie in the in-
flexible resolve to be felt and respected as a nation.
By what electoral machinery a people shall be re-
presented at home, by what diplomatic traditions
and usages its interests shall be represented abroad,
would be questions not worth a thought if there did
not at the same time exist in the heart of the people
itself the high resolve to watch over its own safety
and to uphold its honour. We may have Eastern
questions, or Western questions, Italian, or Ger-
man, or French questions ; but " the Independence-
of-England question" is the one by which, after all,
the others will be solved.
As a military display, as a proof of the earnest-
ness and zeal with which.the one hundred thousand
Englishmen, of whom -the bands in Hyde Park
formed but a small portion; are now performing
their self-appointed duties, the review on Saturday
far exceeded the most sanguine expectations. Old
military men, by no means disposed to judge over-
leniently of these modern train-bands, loudly ex-
pressed their satisfaction and surprise at the great
progress made in so short a period and under such
comparatively disadvantageous circumstances. The
men who during the last six months have so untir-
ingly and uninterruptedly continued their drill
may at least have the satisfaction of feeling that in
no real campaign are they likely to be exposed to
more inclement weather than that which has pre-
vailed during the period of their apprenticeship
in arms. But the glow on their manly counte-
nances and the play of their athletic limbs showed
that burgher and yeoman have alike benefited by
exercises which, whilst the first of national duties,
are not the least in the class of invigorating sports.
It was a great scene, and it was one in which the
'spectators all felt that they, too, possessed as deep
an interest as the more immediate performers on
that stage. Female beauty and affection were there,
not merely to embellish and adorn the scene, but to
contemplate, it might be, the mimic shadows of
stern realities of war, in which a father or a hus-
band. a brother or a son, was preparing to play his
part. The Sovereign before whom these martial
bands swept past, for whose person, whose family,
whose throne they would offer up their lives, must
have been inspired by the proud consciousness
that, by the faithful discharge of every domestic
and public duty, she had made the loyalty of her
people to be something very different from a mere
abstract principle or political necessity, that it
wound round her throne with the tenacity of
strength of the deepest personal reverence and love.
She must have felt that, should a day ever come
like that in which Elizabeth told her assembled
troops at Tilbury that she feared the attempt of no
foreign potentate or prince against this country, for
she felt secure in the affection of her own subjects,
having always so lived and reigned that she had no
cause to fear those whose happiness she still endea-
voured to promote—in the event of such a day of
trial again breaking upon England, she, too, may
hold, with equal right, and, by God's blessing,
with equal success, a like language to her people.
Not the least recommendation in our eyes of the
memorable scene on Saturday was its truly pacific
character. No sane man could for a single moment
dream that the classes who contributed to swell
the ranks of that armed host would ever blindly
and recklessly plunge their own country in war, or
seek to assail the independence of any neighbour-
ing State. Shortly after the conclusion of the war
in 1815 the venerable statesman who so lately
poured forth the prophetic strains of his old expe-
rience to the youth of Edinburgh, and who but a
few nights ago denounced in the House of Lords
the cruelties and the horrors of the Neapolitan
Government, summed up the guarantees for the
pacific dispositions of oar country in the memorable
sentence, " Britain is bound down to keep the
peace in recognisances of eight hundred millions."
There are none -whom these recognisances more
strongly bind than the citizen soldiers of the volun-
teer force. All their pursuits, and pleasures, and
prospects—all their interests and hopes—are bound
up with the interests and the hopes of peace. We
do not speak now of those of aristocratic name and
ancient lineage who have enrolled themselves in
the volunteer ranks as heartily as their ancestors
half a dozen centuries ago would have obeyed the
call of their Sovereign to do the knight's service
by which their broad lands were held. We speak of
the scholar who has left the desk, of the merchant
who has left his counting-house of the flower
of our artisans who give up the time which
is their chief capital, of the great capitalists
themselves whose names would be good on
any Exchange of Europe for half a million.
If such men have armed it is in the spirit of
forecast which prompted the Latin counsel, " If
thou desirest peace keep still prepared for war."
In the great drama of national as of individual life
Hamlet's remark holds good, that " the readiness
is all." We desire to preserve peace for ourselves ;
we have no wish to disturb the peace of others.
But the peace of great empires rests on the con-
sciousness of power—of power exerted to further
the lasting aims of truth and justice. A peace on
connivance, a peace by sufferance, a peace preserved
only till the first opportunity of war, a peace little
better than a hollow truce, is no peace at, all ! Such
a peace only saps away the self-respect which is the
first foundation of a nation's greatness. Nor is; that
a peace which would basely ignore our duties
towards other civilised States, be they weak or
strong, or the obligations—most sacred when con-
tracted towards the weak—or the claims that may
be addressed to England to redress the injured
and succour the oppressed.
The peace which England desires, the peace which
she demands, the only peace which she would accept,
is such a peace as will secure the equal fellowship
of nations—the fellowship based on justice and
" including mercy." That peace she has now donned
her armour to promote and to maintain.

By the deaths of Generals John Mackenzie and
Sir Robert Harvey the following army promotion 4 will
take place :—Lieut.-Generals Sir John Bell, Colonel of the
4th Foot, and Sir S. B. Auchmuty, Colonel of the 7th Fu-
siliers, to be Generals; Major-Generals H. G. Broke,
Colonel of the 88th Regiment, and P. E. Craigie, Colonel
of the 31st Regiment, to be Lieut.-Generals ; Colonels
Gold, 65th Regiment, and C. A. Lewis, Grenadier Guards,
to be Major-Generals ; Lieut.-Colonels Sulivan, sth Lan-
cers, and M'Gee, 3d West India Regiment, to be Colonels ;
and Majors It C. C. Somerset (Staff• office of Pensioners)
and Francis Carey, 26th Regiment, to be Lieut.-Colonels
in the army.—Army and Navy Gazette.

The Calcutta advices by the last mail mention
that.a notification had appeared a few days previously, in-
timating that on the Ist of June the Government would re •
ceive tenders for the conversion, at the option of holders,
of the outstanding Treasui y bills, amounting to about
Z 590,006 into Four, :Five, and Five-and-a-Half per Cent
stock. Same misapprehension having arisen as to this trans••
fer in the Bazaar, where it was regarded as a fresh loan, a
second notification was put forth, explaining that the mca •
sure was merely a conversion of one form of debt into
another, and further stating that the Government had no
intention of entering the Indian money-market as bor-
rowers during the financial year 'ending the 30th of April,
1861.

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