The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-12-05 00:00:00

THE ARMY AND SAVY

When we find an energetic association of men com-
bined for the purpose of depreciating the merits and
demanding the reduction of our military and naval forces
on principle—industriously exaggerating their cost and
extenuating their usefulness—mixing up truth and false-
hood, a few right and judicious suggestions with much
that is erroneous, rash, crotchetty, and violent, we feel
that the cause of reform is suffering a great damage at
the hands of pretended reformers, and that the staunch
advocates of old abuses may justify them by the state-
ments and theories of their opponents.
According to the gentlemen who met at Liverpool last
week, the terrible evil in the country is its taxation. Its
taxation is due to its wars and its army, and its wars and
its army to its aristocracy. This seems a fair summary
of all that they stated there, or are likely to state any-
where else. We are paying annually twenty-seven mil-
lions of debt incurred for past foreign wars, and twenty
millions more (this is an exaggeration of 3 millions) fcr
present defensive establishments. The former were com-
menced, as the latter are continued, for the sole benefit
of some five or six thousand officers, who are sons,
brothers, or connexions of the aristrocracy. This is, we
believe, a fair relation of what is believed by the mem-
bers of the Financial Reform Association, and what they
wish the thinking population of England and Wales to
believe likewise.

Now, we are not going to contend that a public debt of
£770,000,00U is a public blessing, nor that the taxation of
26,000,000 persons to the amount of £53,000,000 is not
heavy. We had much rather the truth should be told.
We may be angry, sorry, indignant, or anything else, at
our burdens ; but we need not lie. If the truth, then, is
to be told, the people of this country are responsible for the
debts of this country. No people were so fond of war, and
none—for a number of years—gained so much by it as did
the English people. For full a century war was popular
with the majority, or only unpopular when unproductive.
Pepys relates the gloom and distrust which prevailed in
the city at the Dutch war; but he also tells us that the
merchants were angry, first, because it was an inglorious
war ; secondly, because it was not a French war. Again,
the only means by which William 111. could consols
his power and party in England was by a French war
Unpopular himself his war with France was popular.
Detested by two-thirds of the nation as an alien and an
usurper, he enlisted their sympathies in his struggle with
Louis Quatorze. A Whig Ministry could never have
weathered the storm and tempest of opposition in Queen
Anne's reign, had it not been for the victories of Marl-
borough. Nothing can so clearly indicate the heat to
which party passion in those days rose as the interruption
it gave to the series of triumphs which had begun at
Blenheim arid Ramilies. These were cherished years
after by the people, who never ceased to contrast the pa-
cific quietude of the Georgian era, with the splendour
which glory and conquest had shed round the reign of
Anne. Everybody knows the hatred and contempt to
Walpole's scrupulous avoidance of a warlike policy
exposed him. At one time he was for giving up
Gibraltar to the Spaniards, and was prevented only
by his dread of the popular fury. It was the mass of the
people who delighted to hear him libelled as the " spaniel
of Spain"—who assailed him
for resisting their own pro-
pensities, and finally drove him into a conflict which his
judgment and his prejudice equally condemned. It was
by his obedience to popular clamour and by his realiza-

don of popular wishes; that Chatham gained a name and
influence which his capriciousness never forfeited nor his
inconsistencies effaced. It was the boast and the theme
of his panegyrists, that he had taught our armies confi-
dence and our navies victory. The American war was
popular till it became inglorious. On Franklin's first
visit to England he found the national bias against the
colonists. It was only when they had lost men, money,
' honour, in a f lc 9t- le, that

ad Om fruitless struggi,, _ the people cried
out for peace. The French revolutionary war was popu-
lar with three-fourths of the nation. Even in the face of
disgrace and discomfiture, men were found to subscribe
large sums out of their private pockets for its continuance.
Never, perhaps, did men contribute so largely to any en-
terprise, as merchants, bankers, landed gentry, and other
of their class did towards the assistance of Pitt's projects
against France. Never was such enthusiasm excited in
the populace as was excited by the victories of the Nile,
St. Vincent, and Trafalgar. There was not a respectable
corporation of England that did not shower down gold
snuff boxes or diamond-hilted swords upon Jervis, Nel-
son, and Collingwood. Liverpool itself has perpetuated
the names of Rodney and Nelson in her streets. Talk of
the aristocracy having encouraged wars for their own in-
terest ! Why, it would have been impossible for any
aristocracy to check the martial spirit displayed, both be-
fore and after the peace of Amiens. by more than half the

tax-paying classes of the empire

Iliaccur-ate in one set of facts, these reformers are
equally inaccurate in others. The army is not officered
by the aristocracy—i. e. by the members of any narrow
and restricted class. It is officered by gentlemen, and we
hope it may always be so, unless the financial reformers
can prove by the example of foreign States that it is better
to officer the army wholly from the ranks, and thus put
the country wholly at the disposal of military adventurers,
who have no civil ties and no civil sympathies. Mean-
while we should advise them to study the Army List, that
they may discover how many of the officers owe their com-
mand, and—what are still more obnoxious—their titles
and decorations, to their own services rather than the in-
vidious possession of an " historical name." Our military
system may be too mercantile; it certainly is not too
aristocratic.

Inaccurate in their facts, they are naturally loose in
their inferences. We have the old stuff reproduced about
colonies, and the hacknied comparison of our trade with
the United States and that with our own colonies. That
this mode of reasoning should be tolerated anywhere in
England is strange, but monstrous that it should be iis-
tened to in Liverpool. Why, the history of this city is
actually imbedded in the history of our colonies and our
navy. You cannot read twenty pages of any history of
the West Indies or the American war, without stumbling
on the name of Liverpool. How much of the money
which has expanded the little creek of Liverpool into a
large city with magnificent edifices and towering ware-
houses—how much of this, gentlemen reformers, was the
produce of those possessions which you disparage, and
those wars which you denounce ? And pray, where, but
for this acquisition of territory, which your much-abused
and much-worked army (an army just equal to that of
Belgium, and one-fourth of that of France) has gotten
for you—where, but for this and the spirit of colonial
enterprise which you discourage, would have been those
United States, whose commerce you vaunt and extol ?
Where, but for the army, which in the piping times of
peace you so contentedly slight and despise—where would
have been the gains of your fathers and the booty of your
forefathers ? Gentlemen reformers, look at home, and
then look wide abroad, before you coin facts to give cur-
rency to follies, and, under the pretence of easing the
burdens, impair the strength_ and dim the honour of
England.—Timee,