The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-29 00:00:00

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RIFLE t'OBPS•

(Rom the Times'

Were anything wanted to iive.a fresh impetus
to the " rifle fever," it would be en attempt by the
authorities to administer a cooling draught, out of
regard to the feelings of our too sensitive neigh-
bour. Let it be officially announced that the Em-
peror of the French made a point of our disarming,
by land and by sea, and let orders to that effect be
sent down to our dockyards, our recruiting sta-
tions, and our Lord Lieutenants, and the only result
would be that every man in England fit to be
intrusted with firearms would be enrolled in a rifle
club before Easter next. There would also be a
change of Ministry the first week in Februar3-. It
is not that people expect anything, or really fear
anything. We are in no immediate apprehension
when we bolt and bar our house doors. Our school-
boys practise the noble art of self-defence, and give
one another hard knocks, all in play, and without
a thought of serious quarrelling. Indeed, while we
enjoy greater security than other nations, we be-
stow as much superfluous trouble for peace and
quiet as the Dutch do for cleanliness. We main-
tain a policeman, at the cost of near £5O a year, in
almost every village, in order that we may be quite
sure of seeing eventually on our table every indivi-
dual of the interesting family of ducklings now
waddling about our farmyards. Confidence with
us is a national luxury, and we care not what we
pay for it. That is the whole secret of the prepa-
rations which, like the slow and gentle undulations
on the surface of a pool, are spreading to every
hamlet in this isle. Day by day the pressure is
increasing, and not only country gentlemen want-
ing to do something more than hunt foxes and
shoot pheasants ; not only fast young men, but
stout yeomen and fathers of families, are summoned
to a regular evening drill. Agricultural meetings,
once perverted into Protectionist demonstrations,
now call to arms, and no recruiting sergeant could
do his work better than the members for agricultural
counties. Slowly have we come to this state of
things, and slowly shall we leave it, if we do so in
our time- The people who frequent a provincial
town-hall or market table don't rashly give up a
notion they have once imbibed. They are very
apt to suspect mischief when they hear advice con-
trary to their prejudices; and at this moment any
Minister who told us that all other nations were
disarming, and that therefore we ought to follow
their example, would only fan the new flame.
Should any such proposition be made, in good
or evil part, it would be sufficient to point to the
enthusiastic orators and hearers at Taunton for
example. These people don't excite themselves in a
hurry. They are not the men who demand to be
led to Paris, and many of them would probably ap-
preciate the discomfort of a journey to London at
this time of the year. Yet they have only to be told
on respectable authority that England has been
threatened or insulted, and they commit themselves
to do anything they may be asked to do. The
yeomanry will go out for an extra month; and the
others, if no longer light horsemen, will meet an
hour or two a-week or a-day for drill or rifle exer-
cise. We wait here for numbers, authority, and
example; but, when we once have them, we go on,
and are not easily called back. It is true that the
state of English society offers many obstacles in the
way of a general armament; but they are only ob-
stacles, and will be surmounted. It is not a pleasant
thing to be a special constable when the foe is a
mob, with the certainty of brickbats, and a fair
chance of something worse ; yet there never is the
least difficulty in obtaining any number of special
constables, be the emergency ever so sudden or ever
so serious. Our domestic habits and our mutual
jealondies do not prevent political co-operation on
the largest scale. They have not prevented a sys•
tern of social organisation to be found only in this
country.. They did not prevent the formation of a
militia in every market town at tho beginning of
the century, and they will not prevent a repetition
of that process on any scale that public opinion
may now think required.
It will be observed that nobody flatters our rural
patriots. They Are not told they car► fight, without
drill, or break a square of infantry as easily as they
could a dry fence. But they are told they may
have to fight for their homes, and that, in the
event of a successful landing, they mu have to
retreat a hundred miles or so, seeing all their
homesteads given to the flames, and county after
county converted into deserts. They arc left to
conclude that we should have rather a hard time of
it, and that England would have to pay a large
price for her safety. All this is far from pleasant
to men long habituated to regular meals, quiet
sleep, good attendance, dry roofs, and no other foe
than pilferers and small vermin. These people nary
be ready to meet a more terrible foe face to face, if
necessary, but they would rather be spared. It is
not in their line. Were it an affair of fists, or of
hard riding, they would feel it all fair; but it is not
fair to be suddenly matched with men who have
made soldering their business all their lives. So
they would rather it did not come to this. They
expect the navy to advance in proportion to the
growth of our internal defences. Paradox as it
may seem, the more we prepare ourselves to meet
an invader on our own shores the less should we
permit him to land. Preparation itself provokes.
All this talk of rifles is unavoidably the hurling
hack of a menace, and therefore a menace itself.
These things provoke one another. Neither side
can or will sit still till the other does, and that in
reality, not pretence.
As for a common disarmament, if such a thing
has been proposed, it could only be as a figure of
speech. with no serious meaning. But the other
day France had not armed, and would not
arm, and then suddenly poured 200,000 men
across her frontier, and drove Austria out of
Lombardy in a few days' march. France, of
course, is now as unarmed as she was then, and
that cannot mean much. There can, indeed, be no
common terms between a country which lays the
whole of its population under the conscription
and another which trusts wholly to volunteers.
Our army and navy are both volunteer ser-
vices, got together and kspt together with im-
mense difficulty and by high pay. Once laid aside
they arc as good as thrown away, and cannot be
replaced. It has been shown over and over again
that were every regiment disbanded and every
ship put out of commission, France could summon
a new army of trained soldiers and a navy of
good sailors in a fortnight, if, need be. For her
to disarm is only to give her men a furlough, and
save herself their pay. Our soldiers and sailors
would have flown away to every corner of the land
and every shore in the world, beyond the reach of
recall. It is the system of France to provide
against the'evils of disarmament, and to reduce it
to a mere name. She has a reserve of soldiers and
sailors, good enough at least to make an army and
a navy for nay emergency, and that reserve she
has always within call. We have no such system.
Disarmament with us is a serious reality. It is
equivalent to burning the ship and casting away
the sword altogether, instead of merely turning
it into a pruning-hook for the time. No such pro•
position has been made, to the best of our belief,
and none such will be made. The bare sugges-
tion is little more that a jest. We are twitted
for our Channel fleet and our rifle corps. It is
evident, however, that the latter have no desire to
cross the Channel; and it is 'not in regard to that
alternative that France can object to them.

The Almanach de Gotha for 1860, which has
just appeared, does not take any notice of the changes made
in Italy by the last war, with the exception of Lombardy.
The reason apparently is nothing is yet officially decided On.
Lombardy no longer stands under the head of Austria,
neither does it find a place in the article relative to Pied-
mont. Nothing is changed in the Almanac/I in the Roman
States, nor in the Duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena;
the Marquis Taney de Nerli remains designated as the re-
presentative of the Grand Duke Ferdinand IV. Tho
Alinanach is evidently waiting until the Congress shall
have definitively decided on the reorganisation of Central
Italy.

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