The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-24 00:00:00

men.

Another consideration beyond all this has served
to forward the advance latterly of this newly
inaugurated Rifle Corps movement. The
growing conviction now is, that skill with.
the rifle is, all . things considered, readily
attainable., lIANs BUSK and all his colla-
borateurs agree in this, if in. nothing else.

A steady hand, a keen eye, a little common sense,
and a small share of perseverance, and your rifle
volunteer may calculate in reason upon becoming-
speedily enough a credit to the corps of which he is
a brother in arms. Hitherto, it is true, the move-
ment has been spreading, as it were, by fits and
starts, in a.deiultory manner, according to the whim
of particular localities, or the ardour of this or that
individual. Nevertheless, even in this desultory
manner, we believe an aggregate has already been
arrived at that would sound scarcely credible if it
were at this moment maszed together. We cannot
help thinking that a stage has at length been
reached in the development of the rifle corps move-
ment, when by a judicious interposition of the legis•
lature (in aid and encouragement of the movement)
the whole complex and hitherto scattered ,scheme
might be: readily 'and effectually--there is no
better word for it systematised. It militates

nothing- whatever, of course, from the military
strength and preFaredness of any country, that the
extent of its military and maritime armaments are
known (are ascertained and'published) to a man, to
a ship, to a gun, to a bayonet. We cannot but
think it would iinmensely advance our insular pre-
paredness, and St/ engthcn our position instead of
weakening it in taw estimation of all the rest of
the great powers o f the earth, friend or foe, if we
had it ascertained a nd officially published in returns
as authentiaand asi reliable as the returns periodi•

tally revised at the Horse Guards, that we have had
organised here voluntarily among the masses of
the educated and industrial population themselves
a vast National Guardof 200,000 or 300,000 skilled
Rifle Volunteers. An armament like that, guaran-
teed to be accurate, so to speak, by having th:"
timbre of the Government affixed to it by way of
absolute authentication would be a judicious warn-
ing to any insidious enemy who might be meditat-
ing the heinous crime and bloodguiltiness of an
unprovoked invasion. Regarding the matter in
this light, we cannot but think that when Parlia-
shall have re-assembled in February, it might be
advisable to have certain reliable returns moved for
and ordered to be printed in the form of a goodly
Blue-book of carefully collected and tabularly
arranged statistics, showing us How many Rifle
Corps have already been established throughout
the United Kingdom, How many are in course of
being established, and How many more are feasible
or desirable, or in actual preparation.

Another suggestion is likewise we cannot
but think deserving of being taken at
an early date now into the serious con-
sideration of the Government. The suggestion,
that is to say which has been thrown out for some
time past occasionallyinvarious directions to the effect
that one uniform system of clothing for these Rifle
Volunteers should be adopted by them under the
advice and by the authority of Government. An
admirably sensible letter, extracted by us
from our chief morning contemporary, And
published elsewhere in our columns this
evening, throws a refreshing flood of light
we cannot but think, upon this long-vexed
question, and does so in the very nick of time,
as follows :—" The uniform ? " asks the Royal
Engineer, who immediately responds to his own
query with a rejoinder somewhat startling, it must
be allowed, in the prevalent bias in favour of grey
or olive green or other colours scarcely visible in a
sylvan or cultivated landscape—" The uniform ?
What better could they wear than the common
hunting costume with the scarlet coat ? Well, to
save appearances and prevent the enemy having
any excuse to hang a man who fell into their hands
as an unlicensed soldier, let us throw in a helmet
or a hunting cap with a funny plume. Oh, but
how conspicuous a red coat would be ! Has it
never struck any of the partisans of inaisible coats
that in the confusion and smoke of action it is d'ffi-
cUit to tell friend from foe, and that the introduction
of distinctive uniforms was, as with the rests in olden
time, to guard against such mischance ? Has the in-
troduction of rifles and distant fighting done away
with the necessity of this distinctiveness. Ask
any one who was at Inkerman if he did not hear
the men curse the hour when they went into action
in greatcoats, instead of as a thin red line, saying
that it was impossible till they came close upon him
to tell a Russian from an Englishman. It was a
drizzling, misty day ; are we not as likely to have
misty days in England ? Then we are at close
quarters, and one would imagine nothing could be
more dissimilar than the outlines of our men and
of the Russians in their flat broad caps and NOAH'S
Ark greatcoats." Certainly the reasoning in this
must be allowed to be sufficiently impressive. But
the writer has not yet done with his force-
ful arguments. " When you come," he says, "to
long distance rifle shooting, no human being can
guess your country. Many, a poor fellow of the
Rifle Volunteers will, if ever the occasion comes
for active service, and he finds himself potted
at from the rear, regret the hour when fancy
was allowed unlimited sway in picking out
inviable grayc_ T shmtltl Ray the erenter the dis-
tance at which you are to fight the more marked
should be your uniforms, and certainly neither the
French nor any other continental nation has made
their uniform less marked in consequence of the in-
troduction of rifles. Why, sir, with us every vo•
lunteer corps has a different and more curious uni-
form ; no human being except the tailor who de-
vised them knows what they belong to at 20yards'
distance. If you ask, you are answered, Oh, I
suppose it is a rifle volunteer.' In action a bullet
may ask the question." An unpleasant considera-
tion so put, but really and truly one that ought to
be dropped into his pipe, and reflectively smoked
out by every contemplative Volunteer.

Sir JOHN BOWRING has just now spoken to the
English public most opportunely. His ex-Excel-
lency yesterday delivered before the Society of
Arts a lecture, comprising within it the gist of all
he hai to say, upon China and the Chinese. There
condensed into that single prelection were the
majority of Sir Join's observations upon that
twin theme during his protracted residence upon
the borders of China as her Britannic MAJESTY'S
Representative.
It is significant, we cannot but think, that at
the very outset of his remarks, Sir JOHN BOWRING
took occasion to utter one pithy sentence of
warning to the British multitude, now that the
nation is again plunging into a contest with that
gigantic race which absolutelomprises within it
one entire third of the whole population of the globe
—Sir JOHN BOWRING actually estimating the
present total of the inhabitants of China at an
amount so stupendous as to be even in excess of the
wonderful aggregate of 416,000,000. It is in the
act of repudiating any intention whatever to touch
upon political questions during the progress of his
lecture that Sir JOHN BOWRING utters this to ,ars
peculiarly significant Warning—when he avows it
to be distinctly his opinion that as far as
territory is concerned we have already enough of
China. The mere Beware is a token of the direc-
tion in which the speaker conceives that we are
now advancing—and the probability he beholds
before him of new territorial acauisitions by Eng-
land in those remote borders of the eastern hemi-
sphere. However this may be, there is the warning
—with a view to encourage us to attend to which
the lecturer immediately begins, it appears to us,
rather injudiciously, •to sing the praises of
llong Kong. lie described it as exceedingly
well chosen as a settlement, and men-
tioned, among other tokens of its astonishing
rapidity of growth the circumstance that during
the period of his own residence there Hong Kong
had more than trebled its population. Whereas he
had found in it but 30,000 Souls, he len; in it as many
as 96,000 ! And while he avowed frankly that
the place could never be expected to attain much
commercial eminence by means of the exportation
of its own products, lie certainly surprised us imme-
diately afterwards with the information that the pub-
lic buildings of the capital of California were con-
structed with granite quarried at Hong Kong. Refer-
ing to the vastness of the Chinese population already
here specified, as comprising within it about a third
of the human race, Sir iOIIN tells us that " The
pressure on subsistence was in consc quence so great,
that Chinese emigration might be reckoned by
millions." Adding—" They pressed everywhere,
and in a port in the Philippines which had only
been three years opened, they already consumed
British products to the amount of 400,000
dollars." Entering more fully afterwards into the
statistics procurable in reference to the Chinese trade
the Lecturer remarked that " the Chinese imports
into England were above 11 millions in 1857, when
there was an extraordinary demand for raw silk,