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

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PRICE 4D. STAMPED, SD.

VOLUNTEER CORPS,.

NEWBURY.

A meeting of an influential character was held
in this town on Thursday in order to adopt mea-
sures for the establishment of a rifle club or corps.
As it was market day there were many of the 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.
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 flu} recollection of
everybody that during the Crimean war, and sub-
sequently when the invasion 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, andiwould 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, arid
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 z eward of his reckless conduct. (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-
tionof his uncle, whose humble imitator he professed
to be, he thought Victor. Emmanuel and his already
gover-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 P 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 whoshould not be withdrawn from
the commerce and agriculture of the country,—men
whose spirit and enterprise in the peaceful 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 andi,militia, backed
by a swarm of riflemen, each of whom 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.
liougoumont 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 have 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-
, vies, 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, hebelieved
a volunteer corps could be clothed and equipped
for £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
strong reserves for his support. "Of course," said
the captain, " had not the old women worn the
appearance of soldiers they could not have had a
moral effect upon the enemy." (Laughter and
cheers.)
Resolutions were passed, that it was desirable to
establish a rifle corps, and a committee was ap-
pointed to make arrangements, and receive sub-
scriptions to provide those persons with arms and
accoutrements who have not the means of doing so
themselves. The last resolution was, that the meet-
ing hoped that the principle of non-intervention
hitherto observed by the Government would be
rigidly carried out, believing that it was the duty-
! and policy of England, during the present con-
I tinental war, to observe the strictest neutrality.