"It may seem almost superfluous to apply this analogy to the state of modern England. We also have been in the enjoyment of a long and profound peace, and have learnt to consider a war as Something almost impossible. We also have entirely outlived the military spirit of the earlier years of this century, and in the pursuit of wealth and in the development of civilization have half learnt to believe in the preachers of a millennium, of the peaceful sweets of which we have already had a foretaste. We also take no care for the fortification of our country or the equipment of our troops. We arm them with weapons which are all but harmless; we load them with accoutrements which are worse than useless; and we sedulously and successfully endeavour to render them incapable of bearing fatigue and hardship. Our navy is employed in training sailors, and, as soon as we have succeeded in rendering them expert seamen and gunners, we dismiss them to enter into the service of foreign nations. Our infantry can hardly march, our cavalry can hardly ride. These troops, so armed, so disciplined, and so accoutred, are extremely scanty in numbers; and those numbers we have materially diminished by sending ten thousand of our best to make war upon savages five hundred miles on the other side of the tropic of Capricorn. Yet, under all these circumstances, we entertain an unbounded confidence in our own resources and position--we mistake the internal balance and equipoise of our polity for the power of resisting external force. We view without apprehension an enormous military power beside us, assuming a position which renders foreign war almost a necessity of its existence. We talk of our old victories by land and by sea, and forget that they were gained by men whose arms and training placed them on an equality with their antagonists. We rely on our insular position, which protected us so efficiently against Napoleon the Great, and insist upon the impregnable trench that surrounds us, although science has effectually bridged it over for Napoleon the Little. We forget the existence of the new power of steam, and the means of organising combined and unlooked-for movements afforded by the electric telegraph. We believe that if the storm with which France is now pregnant does burst, it will be upon the great military powers of the Continent, who sympathise with the proceedings of her government, who possess enormous military resources, and who offer but a poor prize to the victor, instead of upon us, whose free institutions are a daily reproach to the slavery and tyranny which disgrace France, whose military resources are such as we have described, and whose rich shores have not seen the footprint of a foreign army since the days of King John. Stranger still, we believe that we are secure against any sudden blow, and base this agreeable conviction on the good faith of a man who is what he now is solely because he has been able to dissemble and to deceive, to swear and to forswear. Strangest of all, we believe that if a French army should effect a landing, there is some unknown force in the population of this country which would overwhelm and absorb them; and that, while every other people in Europe has proved utterly unable to contend against military discipline, ours, the least warlike of any, will easily succeed where they have failed. The historic parallel seems tolerably close as regards the antecedents; let us hope, for the sake of this island and the cause of civilisation and liberty all over the world, that similar causes may not, in our time, result in a similar catastrophe.