in 1846 on the subject of the Spanish marriages, were again drawn together, or at any rate found it possible to act with one another for a common object. But this concurrence of opinion did not at once terminate their mutual jealousy. Many people in France thought that England could not be trusted to pursue an honourable course on any subject which affected French interests; many sober-minded English citizens believed that the French were meditating the invasion and conquest of England. The acrimonious feelings which unfortunately thus prevailed had been originally fanned into heat by Lord Palmerston's policy in 1840; and, though Lord Aberdeen's career at the Foreign Office from 1841 to 1846 had done much to cool the flame, on at least two occasions during this period questions had been raised which under other guidance might have led to war. The first of these was on the affair of Tahiti ; the second grew out of the appointment of the Prince de Joinville, one of Louis Philippe's sons, and the author of a very warlike pamphlet, to the command of a French fleet on the coast of Morocco. It is not generally known, but there is the highest authority for saying, that there was a difference of opinion in Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet on our relations with France in the autumn of 1845 that Lord Aberdeen, perceiving that the Prime Minister's opinion of France had undergone an entire change, proposed that he should retire; and that, though Sir Robert Peel refused his proffered resignation, he declared that the French King and the French Ministers were so beset by the clamour of the French press that he could place no confidence in the ability of either of them to act on their own pacific and friendly inclinations. It would have been hardly possible for a Prime Minister who expressed such an opinion to have avoided considering what means were available for the defence of England in the case of war. During the first four years of Sir R. Peel's Government, the Duke of Wellington had constantly drawn attention to the necessity for fresh defences; but Sir Robert, engrossed in questions of commercial policy, had paid little or no attention to the Duke's wishes. On September 10, 1845, the Duke reverted to the matter in a more formidable memorandum. Prefacing his argument by a reference to the critical condition of our relations with the United States-and by avowing his belief that a difference with France would bring the States, and a difference with the States, France, into the field against us-he carefully enumerated the various places on the south coast of England on which an enemy might land, and suggested the arrangements which should be made to make such landing difficult. Sir Robert Peel was at last alarmed by the Duke's opinions, and contemplated introducing some measures of defence; and so earnest was he in the opinion, that on his resignation in 1845 he undertook to support Lord John not merely on any measure of Free Trade, but also on any measure which might be adopted for the defence of the country. On resuming office at the close of 1845, Sir Robert Peel did not find it possible to carry out the policy which he had offered Lord John Russell to support. Parliament, occupied with protracted debates on corn and coercion, had no leisure for considering questions of defence, and during the session of 1846 nothing was heard of the probabilities of invasion. At the close of the session the Duke of Wellington went over the whole southern coast of England, personally examining its capabilities both for invasion and defence; and, annotating his memorandum of 1845 with the results of his inspection, he forwarded a copy of it, thus enlarged, to Lord John Russell. On August 12 he supplemented the memorandum with another, in which he urged, in addition to other precautions, the formation of a militia force. It is a remarkable circumstance, which Mr. Greville has mentioned,' that the Duke of Wellington was on much better terms with Lord John than with Sir Robert Peel. Lord John wrote to the Duke constantly; he consulted him on various subjects; and he perhaps never lost the impression which he had contracted when he had ridden as a mere boy with the Duke, in the hour of his trial, along the lines of Torres Vedras, or dined with him as a young man, in the hour of his triumph, on the slopes of La Rune. He was therefore almost instinctively disposed to attend to the Duke's 1 Part ii. vol. ii. p. 433. recommendations. And another of his colleagues was prepared to go even further. In opposition Lord Palmerston had blamed Sir Robert Peel for neglecting the defences, and had used the epigrammatic phrase that steamers had bridged the Channel. In office he could not help perceiving that his own despatches had embittered the relations between France and England, and had added to the reasons for defensive measures. On November 6, 1846, he wrote a letter to Lord John on the subject of the Duke's memorandum. Defences both by sea and land were, he argued, excellent things in their way. But behind the fleet, the first line of defence, and the land batteries, the second line which the Duke proposed to erect, it was necessary to have an increased force, and Lord Palmerston strongly urged the formation of a militia of 100,000 men. Encouraged by the reception which had been accorded to him by the Prime Minister and by the known views of the Foreign Secretary, the Duke on February 8, 1847, drew up a fresh memorandum, which contains ample evidence of the alarm which he felt. In this memorandum he assumed that, if war with France broke out, an attack on the shores of England would be immediately attempted, and that if the British fleet were defeated, a battle would have to be fought on the soil of England for the possession, sovereignty, and independence of the British Empire.' But we had only 50,000 soldiers in the British Islands, and there were not 5,000 who could be employed on any service whatever without leaving standing at their posts without relief all men now on duty, whether in guard of the Queen's person or her palaces, of naval arsenals and stores, of the Bank, of the Tower, or elsewhere.' Men, therefore, from the Duke's standpoint, were urgently necessary; and the Duke recommended that the militia, which he computed at 150,000 men, should be 'raised, organised, trained, and disciplined;' and that 20,000 men should be added to the recruiting companies and depôts of the regular regiments of the army serving abroad. In addition to this substantial increase to our military force, the Duke thought it essential that works of fortification should be erected to secure existing harbours and roadsteads, and that fortified harbours of refuge should be constructed at Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Dover, and Newhaven or Seaford. This formidable memorandum was circulated among the members of the Cabinet, together with a printed minute, and the heads of a draft Bill, prepared by Sir Robert Peel's Administration, for reviving the militia. The Cabinet, however, thought that when the session had already begun it was hopeless to find time to consider the many matters with which the memorandum dealt; and that the state of the finances, burdened with the heavy cost of the Irish famine, and the proximity of a general election, made it inadvisable to deal with the subject immediately. Lord Palmerston, indeed, made a vigorous protest against delay; but men like Lord Grey and even Lord Auckland agreed with Sir Charles Wood and Sir George Grey in declaring that postponement was inevitable. Nothing accordingly was done during the remainder of the Parliament. But after the dissolution Lord John took the matter into his own hands and drew up the following memorandum for circulation in the Cabinet : September 21, 1847. I propose in this memorandum to treat only of a militia force for the United Kingdom. The object to be attained is to have a sufficient number of men enrolled and organised, who might be available for the defence of the country on the first breaking out of war. The reasons urged by the Duke of Wellington against a force of disbanded soldiers appear to me to be very formidable. What I should propose, therefore, in the view of raising a considerable force without too great a strain on the finances of the country, is as follows: : 1. That the Local Militia Acts, passed at the end of the last war, should be taken as the model for the proposed enactments. Officers of the army, not belonging to the counties, to be admissible to any rank under that of lieutenant-colonel. 2. That the men should be raised in the counties by beat of drum; and, if the numbers should be deficient, the poor law unions should furnish the remainder in proportion to their population. 3. That the present militia staff should be used for the purpose of recruiting for the local militia. 4. That the number of men to be raised for Great Britain should be 72,000. The expense of keeping that number out for training and exercise for two months in each year would be one-sixth of keeping the whole number embodied [i.e. for a whole year], or 12,000 at 40%. a man=480,000/. 5. That in Ireland, where a similar force would not acquire steadiness with so short a training, four regiments should be raised, to be called respectively, the Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught Militia. 6. That each of these regiments should consist of 1,250 menin all 5,000 men; that they should not be obliged to leave the United Kingdom, but be disposable in any portion or station of Great Britain. 7. The cost of this force, at the same rate of 40l. a man, would be 200,000l. 8. The whole annual cost of the proposed force would thus be 480,000l. +200,000l.=680,000l. The produce of one penny in the pound income tax is about 700,000l. in Great Britain. The cost of clothing and arms at the commencement is to be added, but it may safely be affirmed that, at the yearly charge of one penny in the pound additional income tax, the country would have the benefit of an increase of 72,000 organised, and 5,000 drilled troops to the force at present available to repel invasion.1 During the next few months a good deal of correspondence took place on the plans which were thus formulated; and the modest scheme of defence which Lord John had sketched in September showed a constant tendency to grow. Before the end of the year the Cabinet had two other plans before it. (1) Lord Palmerston desired to reorganise the regular militia, enrolled either by voluntary enlistment, or if necessary by ballot, consisting of 140,000 men, and liable to serve in any part of the United Kingdom. (2) Mr. Fox Maule, the Secretary at War, believing, with Lord John, that it would be, under any circumstances, a hardship to take balloted men from their homes and business, and that the hardship would be increased if the ballot took place in time of peace and the men were embodied on the outbreak of war, desired to postpone the organisation of a regular militia till the outbreak or approach of war made it indis 1 Sir C. Wood wrote in reference to this memorandum: Dear Lord John,-There is no gainsaying this, but it is hard upon us to have to make up for the deficiencies of our predecessors.—Yours, C. W.' VOL. II. C |