The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-27 00:00:00

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LPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE SPECTATOR'S DELIGHTFUL BANTER ON MR.
CHARLE'S KINGSLEY'S NEW CREED.—"Mr. Eyre is
so noble, brave, and chivalric a man, so undaunted
a servant of the Crown, so illustrious as an explorer
in Australia, and a saviour of society in the West
Indies, that Peers, actually Peers—my soul sinks
with awe as I repeat Peers—members of the sacred'
order, which represents chivalry, which adopts into
its ranks all genius, all talent, all virtue, and all
beauty, condescend, not indeed to give him a dinner
—that would be too much—but to dine in the same
room with him." Only imagine Charles Kingsley,
apostle of muscular Christianity, author of
Yeast, of Alton Locke, of the only song ever
likely to be used as an agricultural Marseillaise,
saying a speech which will condense into
that at a public dinner, with reporters present !
So odd is the explosion of flunkeyism, so utterly out
of accord with the whole character of the man, yet
so evidently genuine, that it is almost impossible to
discuss it seriously, or animadvert on it with the
scorn it so thorougly deserves. Such a speech is one
of those surprises which provoke only a faintly
amused laughter; it is like a bad pun, mirthful only
because of an absurd incongruity. That Mr. Kingsley
should admire and defend Mr. Eyre we can under-
stand, can, we think, explain as a natural develop-
ment of his mind, but that he should go on his knees
to the peerage, declare the Red Book " sacred"—he,
the Christian socialist—an institution " second in
sacredness to that most sacred of institutions, mon-
archy, "an 4 consequently more sacred than the Church
—was there ever a funnier little window opened in
a man's iiiind? The speak.er is, be it remembered,
no sycophant of all above him, no granter of pro-
positions. He has risked his professional advance-
ment to defend a view of Providence too clement
for the majority of his brethren, has denounced
squires of whom the Peers are chief in language
of ringing eloquence, has pleaded the cause of
Chartists, and poachers, and buccaneers, and other
non-respectable classes, and all this while he was in
the depths of his heart worshipping the Peers, mak-
ing the attainment of the peerage the highest reward
of the "English spirit" which has made us " fathers
of the United States and conquerors of India." He
who has written so lovingly of the heroes of the
world has had for his own any being entitled to wear
a coronet ! He is a historian, and yet he tells the peers
that they adopt into their ranks all genius, as if the
peerage had ever been given to a great poet or scientific
discoverer, to a Shakespere or Newton ' • all talent,
as if any talent useful to man rather than govern-
ments were ever officially recognised ; all virtue, as
if in our whole history a man had ever received a
coronet for virtue-of any kind ; and all beauty, as
if it were an act of self-denial on the part of the
richest class to pick out the prettiest women they
can find, as they pick out the finest pictures, and
the choicest wines. How can we wonder, when we
hear such things from such a man, that the British
bourgeois, who did not conceive Tom Thurnall, and
to whom Tregarva would be merely a gamekeeper
with a tendency to prolixity, should think a
vote well rewarded by a Peer's nod, should
deem the verdict of society more ' important
than that of either his countrymen, his conscience,
or his God ? When poets put on plush why should
meaner souls despise tags ? When muscular Chris-
tians speak with 'bated breath and whispering
humbleness in the awful presence of the British
Peer, why should not feeble indifferentists lick the
dust from peerage boots ? The truth is, we sup-
pose, that by some strange twist in his mind, some
accidental association, some quaint exercise of his
idealism, Mr. Kingsley has really come to regard
chivalry and the peerage as synonymous, to believe
that big squires with labels on them are full of
pluck, and gallantry, and fair play, and so to re-
verence them, till he feels as men in the Crusades
felt towards those who had suffered to deliver the
Holy Land. We have nothing to say, except that
it is an odd manifestation of the poetic spirit, and
one very liable to be misunderstood by the public.
A woman idealising a curate into an apostle, is
sometimes a touching as well as a melancholy spec-
tacle, but a poet idealising a peer into a " sacred
being— !"
TIMES.—The conditions of the Treaty of Peace
which was signed at Prague on Thursday evening
last between the 'Plenipotentiaries of Prussia and
Austria have not yet been made public,,as they await
the ratifications of their respective Courts. We have,
however, every reason to believe that the fourteen
main articles of the Treaty are almost identical with
the original terms of the preliminaries of Nikols-
burg, as nothing whatever has occurred since the
armistice to alter the position of the contracting
Powers. A " Seven Days' 'War," as the late strug-
gle for supremacy in Germany has been designated,
has been followed by almost as rapid a pacification ;
but we must not forget how long the causes which
led to the conflict have been at work, nor do we
know how far we may look for the end even of its
direct and immediate consequences. The contest
was for supremacy in Germany—a supremacy which
nominally and by right was vested in the Bund, but
for which three Powers have for the last half cen-
tury contended—Austria, Prussia, and that cluster
of minor States which, in all matters on which dis-
sensions arose between the two rival monarchies,
had only to be unanimous to be sure of a casting
vote in the Diet. Three years ago the minor States
had the upper hand, for the convulsions of 1848 had
identified the cause of the Fatherland with the affairs
of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Danish succession
afforded a pretext for taking up that quarrel where
the Treaty of London had left it. The minor States
drove the Bund to a war with Denmark, but the
forces of the Bund were unceremoniously thrust
aside. Austria and Prussia took the enterprise upon
themselves, and that invasion of the Elbe Duchies,
by which the Bund hoped to raise its authority and
that of the small States above that of the two great
Powers ended, on the contrary, by laying the whole
nation in utter prostration at their feet. Austria
and Prussia, by fighting Denmark, had conquered
Germany ; but it was far easier for them to
share the spoils of the Dane than to establish a
joint rule over the German. The division of the
booty was made the test for national supremacy.
The question was referred to the Bund. The Bund
took the vote of the minor States. All, or very
nearly all of them, pronounced in favour of Austria.
For the first time since the creation of the German
Confederacy two of its constituting Powers were
against the third. The odds were two to one against
Prussia. Yet Prussia had the best of it. Nobody
could have foreseen that a' kingdom of 19,000,000
souls, with an army of 500,000 combatants, would
defeat an empire of 36,000,000, whose forces were
computed at 900,000 men, and in whose behalf
auxiliaries, making up at least 12,000,000 of people,
brought 200,000 additional troops into the field ;
for the diversion made by Italy in favour of Prussia
would, it was thought, hardly counterbalance
the powerful aid which such States as Hanover,
Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurtemburg could have-lent
Austria. Somehow or other, however, Austria did
nothing but blunder, both politically and strategi-
cally ; while unity of purpose, clearness of plan, and
rapidity of action, added to a superior organisation
and a more efficient armament, gave Prussia a speedy
and most complete victory. The question of Ger-
man supremacy is so far solved that Austria with-
draws from all control over Germany, the Bund has
ceased to exist, and the minor States are either ab-
sorbed or compelled to sue singly for such terms as
Prussia may please to dictate. It is evident, how-
ever, that the fortune of war has only settled' the
military question. Prussia has obtained the full
power to dispose of -Germany at her own free will,
but she has not yet done anything that may be
looked upon as decisive and permanent as to the
destinies of the country. Hanover, Hesse, and all
the territory as far as the Maine, have been made
one with Prussia by a Bill of Annexation,
to which the Berlin Parliament will soon give
the force of law. But a crowd of minor Northern
princes, together with the Sovereigns of, Saxony,
Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Darmstadt, Baden, and all
the South, are placed in a variety of anomalous po-
sitions ; some of them are in a state of vassalage,
others in a condition of precarious independence,
but all of them have been so stripped, mulcted, and
humbled, that between them and Prussia there
can scarcely ever be anything but implacable, how-
ever smothered, enmity. It is plainly a case of
" scotched, not killed ; ' and though the material
and mend_ might of Prussia at the head of all the
North may be such as to preclude the possibility of
open resistance on the part of the foes she has been
willing to spare, still it is difficult to foresee the
amount of trouble their combined illwill may give
her, were she ever to be involved in seripus
com-
plications with any of her powerful neighbours.
The old enemies of Germany, if bentioenra i I
will always know where to find her
mble side.
vulnerable
They
against the other as easily as they succeeded in
will know how to set one part of the country
doing in so many former years. If, however, the
much
worskof Pavreuwsseida istbnaotteasitbyeert complete,too
eor too little
has if, indeed, it
mut be
been done, there is no reason to suppose that
matters will stop where they are, and that the ar-
rangements to which the Peace of Prague and the
various treaties with the Oiler States have led will

be considered perfectly permanent. There was
from the beginning at the bottom of the whole
movement something stronger than either the Priis-
sian or the Austrian Government, something more
unanimous than the minor Princes and the helpless
Bund, and that was the German people. The people
have not spoken yet, and the question will soon be
laid before its final arbitrament. Baffled by the
Court, thwarted by his party, .worried by foreign
remonstrances, Count Bismark has one great trump
card still to play. He has yet to see what a Na-
tional German Parliament will do for him. Laid
before
such an Assembly, the cause of the minor
German States will have a worse chance than in a
Cabinet of diplomatists, were the man at the head of
the Council table even such an " iron man" as
Count Bismark. Possibly the people of Saxony,
those of Bavaria and Wurtem" berg-, will not be called
upon to send their Deputies to the National As-
sembly. But an Assembly that speaks
in thename of
thirty millions of Germans cannot failto be heard
from one end to the other of the Fatherland, and the
mere mortification of seeing
themselves excluded
from the Congress of their brethren will put any
harmony between the subjects of the P •
minor
Princes
and their rulers altogether out of the question.
What hold of the public ear the little local Parlia-
ments sitting at Dresden or Munich or Stuttgart
may have when the voice of great orators thunders
from the national tribune it is not difficult to under-
stand. Indeed, even the Berlin Legislature, so long
as it only represents Prussia and the annexed pro-
vinces, will sink into insignificance by the side of
the larger deliberative body to which it is about to
give birth. What the delibemtiuns of a German
Parliament under the direction of Count Bismark
may lead to we shall soon learn. But there is no
doubt in the meantime that a great task is before
that Assembly. Count Bismark's work as it is can-
not stand; it is not meant to stand. There are
things which, bold and enterprising as he is, he
could not achieve single-handed. But Germany has
36 millions of people, and he may trust, perhaps,
that he will find an auxiliary in every one of them.
/THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES." England
is the country of panics—Financial panics, In-
vasion panics, Garotting panics, and Cholera
panics. Our legislation fosters and invites
panics. We inaugurate a law which bases our cur-
rency on an exploded delusion, and see one com-
mercial panic follow another with growing quick-
ness and appalling effects. We organise our
defensive system on a plan so loose and ill-jointed
that, painfully aware of its defects, any great mili-
tary achievement on the Continent is followed by a
deep-seated alarm for our own safety. The Pall-
Mall Gazette has led the way in pointing out the
defects of our defensive forces. In this it has
touched a chord which vibrates strongly in the
heart of the nation, and produced an immediate
effect. England knows that she is not loved on the
Continent. She knows that nowhere else in the
world is there gathered together such tempting
booty. She has seen that, however great are the°
resources of a country—if ill-prepared for imme-
diate action—a few days may settle its fate, and
that the very resources on which she relied may be
only a means of strengthening the hands of
a conqueror. Recent events have proved that
moral obligations weigh little with nations against
material gains, and the country is aware that it may
become the object of attack of a powerful Conti-
nental combination. A new invention might at
any time bridge the Channel for an enemy, and she
has lately been looking on with considerable uneasiness
into her means of opposing a hostile force on her
own shores. The force at the disposal of England
consists of three distinct organisations—the Regu-
lars, the Militia, and the "Volunteers. The regular
army being scattered over the globe, would not be
available to oppose an enemy landed in any spot of
the Empire. It might be considered more as a
military school to organise and lead the inhabitants
than as an efficient instrument of protection. In
this manner its services might be made of incalcu-
lable advantage. But all our departments are so
tied up with red tape, or the system is so exclusive,
that nothing but an overwhelming sense of danger
will lead to the measures necessary to amalgamate
and effectually organise the raw material at hand
into a field force capable of opposing a highly-
trained European enemy. The Militia is the best
' instrument we possess i • and, if better trained and
more generally completed in appointments for field
service, would quickly become a formidable force.
The necessary legal machinery is already in existence.
The men can be compelled to serve, and while em-
bodied work under a military code which makes
them amenable to military laws. After a short ser-
vice under an able commander, the regiments
could scarcely be distinguished from the best troops
of the Line. The tendency is, however, to allow
these regiments, when disembodied, to lose the
organisation which brought them up to so high a
standard. No trouble is taken to keep up the
training either of the officers or non-commissioned
officers ; and, generally, the command is in the
hands of some magnate of the county who knows
nothing whatever of military matters. A sudden
call would bring together but a loose and disorderly
force,—unaccustomed to act in masses, and most of
them unaccustomed to act at all,—without a staff,
without any field appliances which bind together
large bodies , and clothe, horse, feed, and move
soldiers on active service. There is required
for each of these regiments a good commanding
officer, adjutant, and quartermaster ; a sergeant-
major, quartermaster-sergeant, and 10 colour-ser-
geants. This is the nucleus on which the 700 or
800 men can quickly be formed. When a number
of the regiments are organised the same machinery
is required to utilise them as that necessary to form
battalions. The Generals of Brigade, Brigades-
Major, the Medical Staff, and the Field Transport
Corps are necessary? and unless the machinery be
iu existence, it is impossible quickly to utilise a
mass of men for field service. The holiday-soldier-
ing of Volunteers in Hyde Park, Woolwich Com-
mon, and Brighton Downs may be, and no doubt
are, useful in their way but it is not by such shows
that Prussia over-ran Central Europe. Her orga-
nisation was a militia organisation, long and care-
fully prepared, and although the main part of her
troops were taken from the plough and from the
workshop straight to the fields of Bohemia, no more
complete and powerful warlike organisation than
her's has existed in modern times. There is no
necessity for making the vast body of the troops
of :a nation soldiers, and nothing but soldiers ;
but there is a necessity for keeping the military gear
as complete as possible and iu good working order.
It is on this point we fail ; seeming to consider that
if we have the men trained to the goose step, and
able to face correctly to the " right about," they
will fall into their places and be at once available
to confront a foe. The training necessary for infan-
try to move and perform simple evolutions is not
difficult and requires little time. A few old soldiers
in each company placed on the flanks .of sections
and sub-divisions correct and control the movement
of their comrades, and infantry is the back-bone of
an army. The nation might be quite content to
rely for defence on a strong body of brave and well-
armed foot soldiers. To turn a defeat into a rout,
or, to protect a retreat, cavalry is the arm. To
train and handle cavalry well requires the greatest
effort. But, however brilliant may be the appear-
ance they put in, they have seldom proved of any real
utility in the hour when the destiny of nations
is decided. An invading force must be victorious;
even to exist in an enemy's country and to
be victorious, he must defeat the enemy's
infantry. However much he may harry the coun-
try by his light horse he can produce no permanen
effect till he has inflicted an overwhelming defeat_.e
on the infantry opposed to him. If he fails irnetihrel
attack, he is defeated in his object, and must
nation's
Infantry is the raw material, ready
tounatry must
hand, and on her foot soldiers this country
as the
rely in any defensive war. Constituted
Em-
pire is, straggling over the globaer,rn
and the best
army,
cart
And
can-
not be placed in the re,,ularbrce
and carry out the
substitute is vigorously tfoorenofr,,
0-aniing and arming
act already in existenceits
IVe have the
each county throughe
highest respect for the Volunteer force of England,
when called out, and then
and were the members amenable to a law which en-
forced their attendanc.e.
placed them under a military code, they might become
of more use even than the militia; but surely laws
must be passed now, and their organisation now be,
made complete, for if this be attempted only in the
hour of trial, it will then be too late, and no hang-
ing of the Commander-in-Chief, or shooting of
Volunteers, will avail, as the Pall Mall Gazette
shows, to save the kingdom.

COLOURED PEOPLE IN BOSTON.--There are a
little over 2,000 coloured persons in Boston. There are
four negro lawyers in practice in the courts of that city,
and five coloured preachers with congregations. There
are two independent negro military companies. The law
interfering with the marriage between whites and blacks
has long been abolished. Their right of equal entrance
with whites to the public schools, street railways, and
coaches is now fully admitted. The churches, theatres,
and hotels (withscertain exceptions) hold out still against
accommodating negroes on equal terms with others.