ENGLAND'S NEW MISSION.

 (From the Daily News.)

ENGLAND has a new mission to fulfil. She is called on to teach the nations that military power can be united with civil liberty. For the benefit of all posterity she must prove that civilization is capable of defending itself, and of being a noble ally in vindicating the outraged rights of others. She is now threatened by the Times with the "fate of the Dutch and the Venetians," told that she must be the mere spectator of a neighbour's quarrels, and hold her own right and liberties on sufferance, unless she establish a despotism like that of the neighbouring powers. A commercial nation is described as below a military despotism in security. Our mercantile habits and constitutional ideas are said to hinder us in the prosecution of war. " War," it is oracularly said, is war, and cannot be made anything else than war." " It will not be reduced to a system of ledgers, memoranda, desks, stores, uniforms, or other dead or dormant affairs, such as may answer possibly for a domestic institution." Following in the wake of the Edinburgh Review, and other authorities that discard reflection and adopt positively the opinion of their fathers, our vehement contemporary, in advocating a re-organisation of our military system, describes despotism as essential to military success, and holds up the mercantile system and civilisation as inimical to it, and as bringing feebleness and degradation on the nation. It is implied even that England must become a second-rate power, or must imitate the Czar and the Emperor of the French and that, for the purposes of war, we must sacrifice our liberties. Agreeing with the Times in the necessity of reorganising our military system ; believing, however, that the extension of trade is essential to the growth of national power that liberty and civilisation would not be secure if not stronger than despotism ; we must repudiate its doctrines, and show that the re-organisation we demand requires more, and not less, freedom. Our own history is full of encouragement. In spite of our radically and essentially bad military system, which in every war has been more or less set aside before we could succeed, no nation of Europe has performed more brilliant feats of arms, or, in proportion to the amount of its population, has exercised greater military power. The least despotic of the nations of Europe, uniting her navy with her army, England has long been the most powerful military nation of modern times. Nor can we suppose, when we cast our, eyes across the Atlantic, that the freedom which there prevails is incompatible with great military power, whether it be for offensive or defensive warfare. No nation of Europe is insensible to the force of the United States. If free England has no reason to fear, the Czar assiduously courts the republicans. In the time of Louis Philippe their power was not despised by France. If required in any good cause to put forth their strength by sea or land, they would be found a formidable foe by the most powerful despotism of Europe. Of England and the United States it is the boast that the liberties of the people are in their own keeping ; they are their own guardians ; they and their respective Governments are identical ; and the consequence is that the whole military power of each nation, whatever may be its amount, can be directed against a foreign foe, while every despotism in Europe must employ a large part of its military force to secure its own existence. Though in a great national war the thrones of Russia, Prussia, and France might be safe, no sense of security can come to the mind of the Sovereign of any of these states sufficient to make him send, as our Government might, every soldier to the war, and rely on his people to protect him and themselves. Austria is only held together by its army, and nearly half of that must always be employed in keeping her enslaved subjects in subjection. Liberty, therefore, far from being adverse to military power in a nation, is essential to its completeness. We are not required to imitate the despots, in order to become effectually military. On the contrary, our duty and our business require us to adapt our military institutions to the principles of our civil life and the present condition of society. There already exists, as we have previously shown, from the Prime Minister downwards, in military matters, all the absolute power required and the great fault lies in the fact that, this absolute power, and all the wealth annually devoted to support it, instead of being, like our commerce and manufactures, thrown open to the whole people, is monopolised by a class, and made subservient to the purposes of their ambition. The obvious consequence is that the army is excluded from making the same progress as competition introduces into every other department of society. At the same time, the same monopoly extends to all the higher branches of the civil service, which ought to improve and regulate the military, but, which, like the military, is cut off from improvement, and remains for ever behind the advancing people. Thus, neither our civil or military services are imbued with the new life that is for ever springing up. The progress of society deprives both of the vigour of old conservatism; and the self exclusion they impose upon themselves shuts them out from all share in the new vigour of progress. For about half a century, with some interruption, the government of the army was in the hands of the Duke of York and the Duke of Wellington. Throughout the same period, while every walk of civil life abounded in men of great acquirements, we had a succession of Ministers, from Addington to Derby, of the most commonplace abilities. Our chemistry, our machinery, our manufactures, are pre-eminent among the nations—our statesmanship is below par. For the long period of fifty years, with the exception of Canning, whom we do not rate very high, and who held power for too short a time to effect much we have not had one man of great talents at the head of affairs. Sir Robert Peel, illustrious in many respects, was chiefly great from knowing when to yield a commanding or organising spirit he did not possess. More illustrious even than Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington was essentially, in all his habits, a soldier; and his very greatness as a soldier, combined with the well-merited reverence of his countrymen, shut up his mind against a complete knowledge of, and sympathy with, the great social improvements made outside the Horse Guards and Downing-street. The Duke of York, though not an absolute ninny, was in no respect a great man and as he was never controlled by any Minister of great talents, and had no confidence in himself, our military system became, in his hands, in order to guard against his inability and rashness, a system of bonds and checks and dilatoriness. Though the Duke of Wellington suffered very much from the system while in the Peninsula, he achieved greatness under it, and he became attached to it. After he was its chief he had no opportunity of seeing it work in war, or he would have had strength of character enough to reform it, as he reformed the penal laws. We have only, therefore, to look back at the chiefs of the Horse Guards for nearly fifty years, to be convinced that our military system was established on the principle of giving a monopoly of all the honours and emoluments to the rich and the noble, and of taking into the ranks only the dregs of society. The army is paralysed, as trade was, by a monopoly, and more despotism would destroy it outright The Commander-in-Chief, if he knows how to exercise his power, is a perfect despot. The Prime Minister, if he knows how to command, is perfectly despotic over the Commander-in-Chief. He can dismiss him at his pleasure, if he be not a King's son, or the Queen's Consort. What is required to improve the army is to open every rank to merit, to increase the pay of the soldier, to relieve him from the degradation of being flogged, and from irksome discipline and constraint not essential to actual warfare, to banish from the army absurd clothing, useless regulations, parades, and inspections, to invite better men into its ranks, and thus make it a force in which the best men of the country may be proud to serve, and may hope to rise to the highest dignities. We are required to do this in order to reconcile liberty and military power, to infuse into the whole army the vivifying genius of freedom, the power of knowledge, and the order which springs from division of labour. We must get rid of boards, of independent Master-Generals of Ordnance, and of First Lords of the Admiralty, excepting as military subordinate officers. We must have in the Prime Minister, or some one minister immediately responsible to the representatives of the people, a person bound to regulate our whole military power in subservience to the principles of our civil life. We must take care that he be one of the people themselves, familiar with all their knowledge, acquainted with their men of genius, friendly to all the great interests of the country, and eager to avail himself, in organising our army, of all the helps which the arts and sciences of civil life can afford. To stand aloof from them, as our military rulers have hitherto stood, is to cut off the army from all the natural sources of military power.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Wednesday 9 May 1855, page 5