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pense , he argued , as others did that followed "Mm , and it ought to be charged upon the nation . Ministers combated this position , both , then and ou the subsequent evening , Mr . Sidney Herbert contending that the militia is a local force , and that the charge ought to be local . Mr . Hobert Palmer , however , moved an amendment , the effect of which is to charge ojjb naif upon the county rates , "while the other is charged upon the Consolidated jFund : that fund which is , as
it were , paled off for the use of the central Government . Who are the persons that went along with Mr . Robert Palmer in thus giving to the central Government the hold of a paymaster over the local militia ? The y are , Sir John Pakington , Mr . Tatton Egerton , Mr . Henley , Mr . Christopher , Mr . Irton , Mr . Yorke , Mr . Deedes , and Sir Thomas Acland : and to these we must add Mr .
Howard , In other words , we have the landed interest , and with scarcely an Exception , the Conservative , or lory landed interest , engaged in . giving to the central Government so strong a hold , through the purse , over the local defensive force . This is not surprising ; the landed gentlemen have forgotten the days when their fathers stood forward to resist the encroachment of a
standing army , and to retain in their own districts the hold over the weapons of defence , lost to patriotic feeling , they are engaged chiefl y in cutting down their expenses . Hot , indeed , their personal expenses - those they must keep up , even at the cost of mortgage on their estates . Bat they are parsimonious in outlay on "behalf of the nation , or of their country . There is more than one class in this country who would part with every right , could it be shown to " cost something . * ' If the Liberal party in the House of Commons had felt the nature of the question at stake , they would have
come forward like Mr . William "Williams , and insisted upon retaining a local hold over the expenditure for the militia ; but the county gentlemen were permitted to foster the growth of centralisation in its worst shape . After all , it is the country that pays , and the question is , whether those who form the militia shall have a control over it in the form of the county rates , and shall make the land pay its fair portion ? or , whether it shall be smothered tip in the Consolidated Fund , and the land released in order that the lqrger portion of the payment maybe charged upon the trading and working class ?
Mr . Sidney Herbert showed that the Militia Bills which have been passing through Parliament , and which offered some decided improvements , are also likely to entail less expense upon counties . The counties will be relievod from the payment of "bounties ; and as the militia is raised by volunteers , individuals will not be charged the cost of substitutes . At the worst , the charge would be something' like a halfpenny in the pound ; and it ia for the sake of a halfpenny in the pound that the landlords throw so important a part of the control of the militia and the
local expenditure into the Consolidated J \ md . But ifc would bo a groat mistake to treat it simply as a matter of outlay or rating . The political principle ia far more important than the economical principle . "Wo oelievo that on the whole the expense would be far less if the counties rotained their hold upon the fund than if they were to hand it up to the central Government ; , and tho amendment ; is but the commenceraent of such a transfer ; but they relinquish something more . By the very constitution of the force , the men enlisted in it are tho neighbours of tho
ratepayers—are persona m whose comfort and welfare the ratepayers ought to have tho BfroBge » t interest . The ratepayers , therefore —that ]» the people of the counties—should
endeavour to retain and regain all the control that tbey can over the construction of the barracks for the accommodation of the local force , and even over the appointment of servants and of officers . The objection to the present force is , not that it is too much thrown upon the counties , but too little . When the militia was first revived in the reign of George the Second , tlie English people had become accustomed to that which is really a burden and a disgrace to every free
country—a large standing army . Hence the militia of that day was ill constructed , in a niggardly spirit . It was , pecuniarily and politically , a bad economy . "What we saved in the militia we lost in the standing army ; and thus what we still save in thousands , or hundreds of thousands of pounds , we lavish in millions ; while we hand over the real power of the country to the Executive Grovernment . This is the vice of our present
system . No country can be called a free country which cannot give effect to its own wishes . The working-classes have been agitating for universal suffrage , and have been forced to give up the game ; they cannot obtain it . They tried petitions , and they were laughed at . They tried riotings , and they were " put down ; " and they will continue to be put down so long as the maintenance of a standing army places the balance of the force in the country entirely under the control of the Executive
Government . Those who are interested in improved government should also be on the popular side in this question . We agree that it is necessary to sustain the Executive Government by force in periods of popular disturbance ; but where , we ask , has a national militia ever failed to sustain the Government ? To suppose that it . does so , is to assume that a nation is incapable of governing itself—to assume that the English people are not as
competent for freedom as the American people . We have had , it is true , outbreaks in America , but not more than in . this country , and they have been as determinedly suppressed . If Philadelphia has had its native American riots , or 3 N " ew York its Macready disturbances , in both cases the outbreak has been put down by the militia force . 3 STo imperial army could have executed its duty with greater fidelity or efficiency than the Eirst Division of New York in the latter instance .
In fact , what is to be expected from a militia , but that the aggregate strength of the country should confirm the public opinion of the country . A national militia does but add the power of tho right hand to the head of the nation . On the other hand , a militia can only thus he employed in sustaining public opinion , It cannot be employed to surprise or overturn the constituted Government of a free country ; since before that can be done , it would be necessary to win over the
maiority of the nation , which would in itself suffice to carry any public measure . A militia , therefore , can only exist in defence of a free country , of its Government , and of its local self-government ; it preserves -to the people the power of enforcing its will , and secures to tho humbler classes a power of controlling tho expenditure in whoso benefits tho richer classos may shave , but towards which they usually contribute so small a portion . It is
through a militia force that a nation maintains its grip of national power ; and when an English people consented to transfer that power to a standing army , they gave up that hold and sold their birthright for a mess of pottage—for somo supposed saving of taxation or trouble . [ Freedom is secured in proportion as tho Government and the force are localized ; and what Mr . Palmer has saved ia county rates , tho people has lost in independence
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732 THE LEADER [ Saturday ,
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THE CARDENS OF PRIVATE LIFE . The Times excuses Carden , the rejected lover of Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot , on the score that love had turned his brain ; but avc are disposed to excuse him on the ground that lie is no worse than his betters . If the Irish Gardenio was crazed for love , there was method in his madness . His conduct , we agree , was heinous , brutal , unmanly ; it violated the very principles of intercourse between man and woman : but who observes
those principles ? The modern Cardenio is altogether an improvement upon his Quixotic namesake . The Spaniard went wandering about "high unsuccessful mountains , " with nothing to warm him but " Lucinda ' seyes ;" so that he presented on the whole a beggarly condition . The Cardenio of llathronane , in lieu of letting his substance go to rack and ruin , invests it in a carriage , with horses and
attendants . GLike Billy Taylor s lady , being disappointed in his love , " straight he called for swords and pistols , " and " brought they vos at his command ; " but instead of imitating the True ! Love of that mournful tale , lie was far from shooting the lady : it was her defenders whom he intended to shoot , and the lady herself he intended to secure—as a material guarantee .
She had refused him , it is true , and a real man will not force his affections upon a reluctant- woman ; but in this case there -was something more than affection . The Times , censor morum , appears to have overlooked the distinction . Other men have engaged in designs for the fulfilment of brute passion such as that imputed to Mr . Carden in one of the
counts , and they have been punished for the felonious intent . ; but how are we to suppose that Mr . Carden was under the impulse of a brute passion when there was another object which might explain , his actions ? There was not only the lady , but her fortune . Possibly he might have acquiesced in a refusal of the girl only ; but men do not so Teadily assent to the refusal of thousands . The fortune
alone would explain his anxiety for compulsory wedlock ; and the lady would naturally have followed her fortune . Whether for fortune or mere possession , however , other men have been more fatally successful , but without Cai'denio's boldness or frankness . If the object be simply possession , sometimes , as in the case of Alice Xeroy , violence is aided by fraud ; and there is reason to believe that the case of the
Belgian girl is very far from being singular Iu other instances , fraud and studied temptations , their consequences sedulously concealed , perform the effect of violence . But iu either case the result is the same . Tho " Old Marquis" docs not show himself -with the effrontery of a Carden , hufc he succeeds better . Carden evidently intended to offer inarriago : does any Old Marquis mean it ? The ci'iino committed at Eothatrd , therefore , was less than that daily perpetrated by
distinguished persons , who might lawfully sit on somo case of compulsory wedlock or its dissolution , as judges in appeal I Either way , thetruo perdition consists , not in tho loss ot social standing or of fortune , but m tho appropriation of a body with a soul in ifc—in tho outrngo to natural feeling—in tho sei / Airo of that which can only be tho gift of affection : but is the horror less for a girl without a
fortuno than with it—less if tho girl iindu herself settled , not at llathronsrae , but at tho mansion of a Denis or Marmitysee ? There arc occasions , and tltey are numerous , in which a Carden may fulfil his " intent , " in regard to fortuno and all , without braving law or felonious punishment . It is where ho makes tho father his accomplice . Is the crime mitigated ? Ia tho victim tho less to bo pitied because tho man whom
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 5, 1854, page 732, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2050/page/12/
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