The Sun.
London, England, 1859-06-04 00:00:00

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PEICE 417. STAMPED, )IJ.

VOLUNTEER coiers.

NEWBURY.

A meeting of an influential character was held
in this town on Thursday in order to adopt mea-
surer
A s i t forwa sthe
marketestablishment
daythere
r e ofwere
ae
r rifle
many
o
clubf
theor corps.
coun-
try people present who were interested in the esta-
blishment of additional national defences, The
chair was taken by the Mayor of the town.
ie
Captain VERNON, M.P. for the county, was called
upon to move the first resolution,—That it was de-
sirable to. form a rifle corps for Newbury and its
vicinity. He remarked that her Majesty's Govern-
ment, yielding to the desire of the people, had de-
cided on volunteer corps being established through-
out the kingdom. This had long been the general
wish of the people, for it was in the recollection of
everybody that during the Crimean war, and sub-
sequently when theinvasion panic was at its
height, the public journals teemed with letters
calling for the formation of volunteer, corps, and the
Government-of the day was urged on all sides for
its sanction, and even without that sanction or
recognition in any way rifle corps or clubs were
formed, and still existed, and-would form a nucleus
to those now in process of enrolment. The Govern-
ment had yielded to the wishes of the people, and
very properly .so, to his mind, as he proposed to
show. The two greatest military Powers.in Europe,
so far as numbers were concerned, stood face to
face in murderous antagonism. He said murderous,
because an unjust war like this% Was, at the best,
but a license to murder. But their strife was none
the less desperate because it was purposeless, and
must inevitably terminate in mutual discomfiture.
If the vanquished lost much the victor would gain
nothing, while the miniature Monarch of Sardinia,
whose. restless ambition first disturbed the peace of
Italy, and now disturbed the peace of the continent,
and jeopardised that of Europe, would inevitably
reap the just i eward of his recklesuonduct. (Cheers.)
He had sown the wind, and would reap the whirl-
wind. If Austria, his aggrieved enemy, were the
conqueror, Sardinia would be pinioned and stripped
of his feathers; his ambitious flight would be closed
for ever. If his ally and brother despot, Louis Na-
poleon' gained the ascendancy, judging by the ac-
tion of his uncle, whose humble imitator he professed
to be, he thought Victor Emmanuel and his already
over-taxed and by that time thoroughly ruined
people would curse the day when the first French
soldiers marched into Italy, and turned their happy
and fertile land into a wilderness of bloodshed and
of rapine. (Cheers.) Russia was massing her forces
on the boundaries of Austria. Prussia was placing
her army upon a war footing, and the smaller states
and kingdoms of Germany, bound to Austria by a
common language and a common fatherland, linked
also by a.common hatred of France for evils inflicted
in days gone by, were arming themselves, ready
and willing to join in a war that offered to their
angry passions a prospect of the wild justice of re-
venge. When the distant mutterings of thunder
were heard he was wise who prepared for the com-
ing storm. When Europe from one extremity to
the other echoed with war and rumours of war, from
which we professed to stand aloof in armed neutra-

lity, what.would ensure that neutrality being re-
spected ? Why, the fact of its being a neutrality
armed to the teeth. The great Duke of Wellington
used to say, that nation was most secure in main-
taining peace which was supposed to be the best
prepared for war. (Cheers.) Then let us be pre-
pared for war. Let us not seek it, but let us not
flinch from it if it seek us. (Cheers.) Let us be
prepared for defence as well as offence, but
at the least possible cost to the country—not by
an undue increase of the standing army, but by in=
corporating the unpaid and self-equipped body of
volunteers—men who should not be withdrawn from
the commerce and agriculture of the country,—men
whose spirit and enterprise in the peacgul pursuits
of life had made our glorious England the prosper.
ous land it was, men who, making the dangerous
trade of war their pastime and its details their re-
creation, were ready at their country's call to throw
aside the pen, and seize the new practised rifle,
prepared to stand or fall in defence of their hearths,
their kindred, and their homes. (Cheers.) All
Europe respected our naval defences, and they
would think none the less of our land defences if
they found that 100,000 regulars and'militia, backed
by a swarm of riflemen_ each of wh'ian carried the_
lives of 60 invaders in his cartouch-box, to smite
whom would be a labour of love. England was the
most defensible country in the world. It was in-
tersected by hedges, ditches, and banks, every one
of which was an entrenchment. The old idea that
a country should be surrounded by regular for-
tresses was exploded ; battles and not sieges de-
cided the fate of nations. An enemy could not ad-
vance in England; artillery and cavalry could not
quit the high roads, and the natural obstacles he
had spoken of made the country easy to be defended
by the rifle. The greatest loss at the recent battle
of Montebello was in the defence of a farmhouse.
Hougoumont was the key to the position at Water-
loo; in England every homestead would be a
Hougoumont. The Duke of Wellington was asked
what he would have done had he been driven from
Waterloo. He said, " I should hate retired into the
forest of Soignies." "Where," then, if driven
thence ?" " That," he replied " was impossible."
Well, every covert in England would be a Soig-
nies, from which no man in the world could drive
English riflemen. (Cheers.) England was the
best adapted for rifle defence, therefore it was
decided to raise volunteer corps. (Loud
cheers.) The gallant captain then proceeded
to deal locally with the subject, and said, he believed
a volunteer corps could be clothed and equipped
for .E 7 each man, and gave reasons why volun-
teers should be clothed in a uniform and made to
assume a soldierlike appearance, inasmuch as they
were to be a moral as well as a physical aid to the
country, and cited the anecdote of the French hav-
ing landed at Fisgard in 1798, when Lord Cawdor
lined the hedges in the vicinity with the female
peasantry, who in that part of the country wore
round hats and red cloaks, and, advancing upon the
enemy, persuaded him to surrender to the small
force of regulars at his disposal, pointing to the
thesa tpi
appearance
en
captain,
ar
ne
cs reserves o
r v
hadsf
oo rdd
soldiers
rsos support.t
tthehey
o l d
could '
v‘
Of
o not e m course,
f
have
moral effect upon the enemy." (Laughter and
cheers.)
Resolutions were passed, that it was desirable to
naworn:adt said
a
e h
establish a rifle corps, and a committee was ap-
pointed
to make arrangements, and receive
iode those
havenotptehrseomnseawnisthofadromins
doing so
itas
nl iccrgeelomPuhtstoier:lenven accoutrements
thps'arrlthov prove
thela s resolutionnciple owf anso, thatn nt
et
rhveemn
teieotn-
hitherto observed by the Government would be
rigidly carried out, believing that it was the duty
and policy of England, during the present con-
tinental war, to observe the strictest neutrality.

NEWSPAPER'
•e,
,
wh at the foe may by some \ landing somewhere, and then s ,
in a position to rally in our own dis
protect our own homes. Ili these circ to
we have several forces to rely on. We have
the standing army of the country, and we have
the militia of the counties, but these forces may be
employed in other parts of the empire as well as
in this, and therefore it becomes us to look about
us and see how far we can provide for our protec-
tion. I myself do not expect so much from volun-
teer companies as some people do; for, alter al!,
volunteer corps arc not always under the very best
of discipline, as past experience has shown us, and,
when hard pressed with exercise and training,they
get disgusted at the task. Volunteer companies
must give great attention to their training before
they can expect to be available for the defence of
their -different localities. I must say that as far as
the Government have gone, they have done little
or nothing for the promotion of these companies.
All they have done is to permit us, under the Vo-
lunteer Act, to arm and drill and form ourselves
into companies, which proceeding, without the per-
mission of the Crown and of the Government, would
have been illegal. But by the supplying of arms,
by the finding of instructors to instruct the volun-
teers in the use of their arms, by providing prac-
tice-ground, by providing targets, and by providing
ammunition, all the expenses are thrown on the
volunteers themselves. I think that if this move-
men is really to turn out anything at all, some step
must be taken by the Government in the direction
of, at all events, finding the arms that are to be
put into the hands of the volunteers. (Hear,
hear.) It is evident, from the Circular as -
issued on the 28th of May, that what-
ever volunteer corps are formed, from Land's
End to John' o'Groat's house, they should. be armed
with the same description of arm, and the object of
that is, that they may be able at once to
use the ammunition made up in the Government
manufactories and essi.4 from the Government
stores. Lord Panmure then proceeded to refer to
the propriety of forming vohiateer corps in the
towns and districts, and giving to each corps the
choice of their commanding officer, who, if approved
by the Lord-Lieutenant, should. on his responsi-
bility be recommended to the Crown ; and to the
necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of mili-
tary discipline by the volunteer corps ; and, with
regard to the use and preservation of arms, he said
—"I am inclined to think that in every volunteer
corps every volunteer should be intrusted with the
responsibility of keeping his own arms ; that he
should take his arms home with him; that he should
be subject to a visitation by his officer at any time
to see tint they were in a proper condition; and
when he comes to the field, there, and there alone,
he should use that arm with ammunition furnished
to him for that occasion. He should not be allowed
to use that arm at his own free will when he is not
on the practising ground and under the eye of the
officer that is commanding him."
At the conclusion of his Lordship's address a
large number of gentlemen agreed. to aid in the
formation of a corps for the district.

BRECON.

A meeting, numerously attended, and presided
over by the Mayor, has been held at the Town -hall.
Resolutions were carried to the effect that steps for
the formation of a rifle corps should be immediately
taken, and that public meetings should be called
throughout the county, a committee being formed
to carry these resolutions into effect.