rules directly or indirectly in Italy, he will know
how to have prefects in every town, who will keep
a black-list of patriots as carefully as did the
police of the King of Naples, Garibaldi inclusive,
and with the season may come the law carrying
them to Cayenne or elsewhere.
But what has this to do with England? Simply that some fine morning Malta may be attempted, the Dalmatic coasts appropriated, and Russian ships cruise on the Black Sea to Constantinople. If it were a possible thing to take the empire of the seas, the ocean police of the world, out of our hands, it is very doubtful if it would be wielded with so strong a sense of justice; and therefore must we plant our ocean fortresses in the Channel or elsewhere. It is certain that the French em- pire is seeking to colonise. Otaheite, the Papuan Islands, Cochin China, M. Lease p’s trial to appropriate Egyptian territory without will of the owners, Mr. Belly on the Isthmus of Panama, are all feelers put forth; and we dare say that Bona- partist agents from time to time sound the feelings of French Canadians — nay, even Pondicherry and Chandemagore represent “a cause.” All this may be nothing. The French alliance may be as firm with England as with Russia, and as full of faith; but as our venerable old councillor, Lord Lyndhurst, so well expressed it, England must not depend upon the forbearance of any power on earth. By her own right arm must she be protected. From Prince Joinville to the French colonels, Frenchmen have commonly speculated on the possibility of invading England, and so we are to have English guard-ships in the English Channel as a corresponding speculation.
We speculate on no invasion of France; we would fain be at peace with the French nation; but if the French army will not allow the French Emperor to be at peace with us, and a surprise is to be plotted, we may have the right to ask questions upon suspicious appearances. We should not coolly behold all preparing. Any powerful nation devoting all, and more, than its surplus means to materials for aggression, and, if not actually aggressing, keeping all its neighbours around wasting their means in providing against expected aggression, is as much a nuisance as a parish infested with thieves who prey on neighbouring parishes, and whose rulers will neither put down the thieves themselves nor permit their neighbours to enter their boundaries to do it. Such a state of things can only end in a general union of the surrounding parishes; and such is the case with nations. It has once been the case with France, and may be again; and it might be with the result of making the Rhone, instead of the Rhine, a boundary, and giving to Germany sea-ports in the Mediterranean.
And so we are to patrol the English Channel with armoured water-rams carrying monster guns, which French regiments in French fast steamers are to board and carry. But these same rams are, by means of their steam-power, competent to a new mode of defence against boarding. They can use air-guns, worked incessantly by the engine and throwing streams of shot, and they can throw streams of hot "water at the same time; and all this operated by intelligent men from behind impregnable iron barricades, and not mere pikes and cutlasses behind boarding nettings and hammocks.. The 6lan of the foemen might gain the decks, but none would leave them alive. Zouave and Turco, or other savage men, may be imported into the service of our foes, ready to swarm like tigers on our defences, but not even tigers can resist hot water. No, no! our steam-rams can only be competed with by similar vessels in water duels — tournaments in which skill must win — skill combined with capital. And whose capital can match ours in such a contest? We are indigenous iron-workers, with the best workmen and the healthiest workshops of the known world, and we get coal cheaper than any other. We supply belligerents with the sinews of war in this item, and if we cease to supply them coal will rise heavily. We make for others iron war-steamers, because we can furnish them cheaper than others; and we may stop the supply when it suits us.
And as regards detriment to our commerce by steam privateers, we have not much to fear on this head. Steam is useful only to civilised people. If salt water were fuel, to be manufactured on board, it might do for rovers, but away from rivers or ports where coal could be procured, steamers would be as little efficient as rowing galleys.
The conclusion arrived at is, that henceforth in iron walls, and not in wooden walls, are we to find the floating fortresses of our national defences, and that they must be officered and crewed by a race of intelligent men, highly paid and highly prized; that their condition as to comforts must be as nearly as possible assimilated to that of equal men on shore; that one blow from a craft of this kind, under steam, with a small crew, will be more efficient than one hundred tons of iron hurled from guns by a numerous crew, and that the men who work her may be practically defended from injury far more efficiently than the gunners of stone forts on shore; and that these craft must exist in such numbers as to command the ocean against all the world whenever need occurs, those who command it never infringing the rules of justice — having a giant’s strength, but never using it like a giant. The world has not yet come to the condition of universal justice; but the English nation is powerful enough to uphold this justice, and, recent wars notwithstanding, the nations of Europe are gradually arriving at the same conviction. It will be well for the dynastic families if they perceive the possibility of preserving their fortunes by converting their military aims at conquest into commercial aims — the mischiefs of mankind into the benefits of mankind. In proportion as this shall be done, so will armies and fleets cease to exist save as a land and water police. Meanwhile, let our motto be —
Our iron walls! our iron walls!
Where’er the voice of Freedom calls,
By margin of each sea or ocean,
Mind and body claiming motion!
Stirring cottages and halls
In rising uplands, sloping falls,
Commerce clamouring for its freedom
Throughout Europe’s feudal Edom!
