over a militia in point of courage, that "the lower the natural military qualifications of a people, the greater will be the superiority of the standing army; and the higher their natural valour, the less will be the superiority;" and then comes to this conclusion : “So, as I maintain that, with a cowardly people, the superiority in courage of a standing army is as something is to nothing, or, putting it in an algebraical form, is as x : 0-i.e., infinite; with a brave people I believe that the superiority in courage of a standing army over a militia would sink into comparative insignificance, when compared with the valour which each party (each being assumed to be of the same nation or race) would bring into the field. The proportion would then stand as +10x: 10 x-that is, as 11: 10-a small superiority." Such is the result where the militia is composed of riflemen and horsemen so exercised, and the standing army opposed to it are of the same race, and possessing the same measure of natural courage. It follows that if the standing army opposed to this militia be of another race, not possessing precisely the same measure of natural courage, such standing army will have no superiority whatever over such militia. This physical well-being in the free citizens of a free State is necessarily accompanied by moral and mental well-being, by patriotic spirit and general force of character, by moral and mental energy. The frequent meeting together of the youth for athletic exercises, and of the men for the discussion of public matters, binds together each little community; and while it exercises both their minds and bodies, in a very different manner from that in which any State system of education like that of Prussia does, inspires each individual with that love of his country and that force of character which animated the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ, and dictated the dying words of Sparta's great and heroic enemy on the field of Mantinea: "I have lived long enough, for I die unconquered.' The patriotism and force of character which were produced in so eminent a degree in the little republics of ancient Greece, were also signally exhibited by Rome in its early history; and in later times by small nations, like the Swiss and Scots, which offered a heroic and successful resistance to powerful enemies seeking to deprive them of their independence: Bannockburn and Morat may be joined with Marathon and Thermopylæ. And there is, as it appears to me, even a still greater degree of patriotic spirit and unconquerable courage displayed in bearing up against repeated defeats, as the Romans did against Hannibal, and the Scots under Wallace against Edward I. Of men with souls thus invincible-men who might be overpowered by numbers and superior generalship, but could never be reduced to despair-desperare de republicá-consists the real strength of nations, and not of the power to buy foreign mer cenaries. The incapacity to understand this spirit rendered David Hume, with all his intellectual power, unfit to write history, as well as unable to fathom some of the depths of human nature. The whole force of the Roman empire, although exerted to the utmost under Severus, one of its most warlike princes, could not totally subdue the nation of the Caledonians; whose invincible spirit in defence of freedom* at last obliged that empire, after granting them peace, to spend nearly two years in building a wall of solid stone, twelve feet high and eight feet thick, with forts and towers at proper distances, and a rampart and ditch, from the Solway firth to the mouth of the Tyne, about sixty-eight miles, to repress their inroads. And Severus, in his attempts to subdue Caledonia, is said to have lost no less than fifty thousand men.† And yet Mr. Hume says that the Romans entertained a contempt for Caledonia.‡ But there is no nation in ancient or modern times that possessed, as far as I am aware, institutions so eminently fitted to produce both patriotic spirit and force of character as those of England, while they remained in their healthy and uncorrupted state; and before the attempts had commenced to assimi * Devita morti pectora liberæ. Hor. Od. iv. 14, 18. Hist of England, ch. i. late them to the slavish institutions of continental Europe: particularly to those of Prussia, the people of which have been described by a modern writer as "the most superintended, the most interfered with, the most destitute of civil freedom and political right-in a word, the most enslaved people in Western Europe, and the most educated."* * Laing's Observations on Europe in 1848 and 1849, p. 188. CHAPTER IX.
THE DEAR DEFENCE OF NATIONS. THE MODERN ENGLISH NATIONAL DEFENCES. In the sixth chapter I have quoted some very significant words of the great Duke of Wellington. “If the French should succeed in landing an army in England, then, indeed," says the duke, "would commence an expensive contest, whatever might be the result of the military operations." The duke was led to make these remarks by the just complaints of the English people on account of the enormous expense of the war in which they were then engaged. Under the circumstances of the present time, a question, which is not new, forces itself upon public attention- the question, viz., What are the causes of this enormous expense of modern wars undertaken by Great Britain? Some writers, and particularly David Hume, seem to think that the question is solved by the consideration of the greater facilities and means for borrowing which existed after the Revolution, and did not exist before it. In his Essay on Civil Liberty, published in 1742, Hume says: "Among the moderns, the |