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look at facts and fail to see that the extreme peace party , whether they are right or wrong as to the .-future , are wrong as to the present . Never probably in any age or Ration . did the war spirit run higher than it did in England at the commencement of this war . Xiook at the subscriptions to the Patriotic Fund . Look at the enthusiasm which followed the troops .
IiOok at the crowds round the pictures of Alma and Inkerman in the print-shop windows . Look at the newspapers , which collectively , if not individually , are a good index of public opinion , and mark the torrents of brag and bluster which they pour forth , and the swaggering threats which they are uttering at this moment against any minister who shall venture to show himself conscious of
our real position . The peace orators have totally faded to make head against the tide ; they have only chafed it . And what security can they possibly have that this spirit will not break out again on the first affront , or apprehension of an affront , to our national honour ? The old A-dam . will be too strong for the young Bbight for many a day to
come . Besides , even if progressive civilisation were likely to extinguish the war spirit in England within any calculable time , our aversion to war would not produce the same aversion in our neighbours . Nothing could be more pacific than the declining Byzantine Empire ; but unfortunately its pacific tendencies were not reciprocated by the Vandals and the Turks , and itjvvanted the only instrument which could have disposed Vandals and
Turks to peace—an efficient and formidable army . Europe is full of great standing armies , kept up by despots and liberticides for their despotic and , liberticide purposes . Any one of these crowned conspirators , or the whole combined , may any day pick a quarrel with us for the sake of plunder or " glory , " or from hatred to those free institutions whose very breath is pestilential to oppressors . We must be provided against this as a man travelling through dangerous roads would be provided with arms against robbers , though carrying arms in itself may
be ~ a barbarism and a nuisance : As freedom recovers herself , and begins to spread again through Europe , this danger will , of course , decrease , and the mutual reduction of armaments will become a feasible , as it is always a rational object of diplomacy . But in the mean time we must be prepared to guard the ark in which European freedom has taken refuge , and this can only be done by letting Cossacks of all kinds know , that if they attack us they will get as good as they bring . Mr . Bright himself need not have been ashamed to wear the laurels of
Marathon . . "We must have a sword ; and as we must have a sword , we had better have it sharp . A militia , like that of America , is the natural and the best defence of a free country . But even America , though separated by the Atlantic from the great military despotisms , finds it necessary to keep a small standing army ; and we cannot be safe without a larger nucleus of regular troops and professional commanders .
If , as it appears , we must make up our minds to regard this standing army at present , and probably for a long time to come , aa one of the necessary institutions of the country , it becomes the duty of all public men to learn to understand it and to do their duty towards it , as they would in the case of any other acknowledged institution . Neglect of it is simply suicidal , and can only tend constantly to ostracise from office statesmen who are so unwise ns to declare themselves impossible . You must do your best by the army aa it stands ; and the leaders of the
middle classes have plenty to do , and that not of an uncongenial or inappropriate kind . They are not called upon as civilians to ape the military character ; their duty is to see that the aduiinistrataon of the army is just , economical , and efficient ; to secure reward to merit ; to keep down jobbing ; to repress blackguardism ; and , by taking care that the citizen is not lost in the soldier , to guard against those dangers to freedom which the mere principle of a standing army too frequently involves . The finest army that this or any other country ever possessed was that of CbomweiiL ; and Cromwell ' s army was a middle-class army , officered by men from
the middle classes . We know the value of peace to liberty as well as other interests ; and we heartily honour Mr . Cobden and Mr . Bright for their exertions in the cause of peace . By continuing their exertions in the face of so much obloquy , they have shown more true courage , however inopportunely , than they would have done by blustering for war > But we repeat it , statesmen must look at facts . One day , through the progress of civilisation
and by the blessing of Heaven , universal peace may come upon the earth . But at present the world is full of the seeds of war . Fanaticism , cupidity , and piratical ambition are everywhere around us with the ready means of aggression in their hands . The most we can aspire to at present is never to take up arms except in a just cause ; and when we are compelled to begin the struggle , to carry it on with generosity and chivalry , such as is falsely ascribed to the feudal butchers and robbers of the middle ages , and has been truly shown by our common soldiers
in this war . The military character has its vices , but it has its virtues also ; and Mr . Bright must be twice a Quaker if he can shut his heart to heroism . By doing so he justifies a similar prejudice against the commercial character , which likewise has its moral infirmities . The factory may sometimes contain as much crime and misery as the camp . The gentler and better spirit of humanity struggles alike against War and Mammpnism . Ag ainst both it struggles fitfully and weakly . Againstr "both * it must struggle long , we will not say for ever , in vain .
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THE CAMBRIDGE BILL . The framers of the Cambridge Bill have copied the Oxford Bill in some respects as the Chinese copied the ship , dry-rot and all . The Oxford Bill gives a veto on the measures of the Commissioners to any College which can find two-thirds of its Fellows sufficiently attached to abuses to exercise it : and the Cambridge Bill faithfully repeats this
melancholy provision . Checks and appeals abundantly multiplied are congenial to the English mind and acceptable to English legislators , especially if the appeal is from the right men to the wrong . But at least the Court of Appeal should be impartial . To charge a Commission with reforms , and give the very objects of those reforms a veto , is to enact a cumbrous nullity ; au exemption in favour of incorrigibles would bo at once more frank and
more . Government may hope that the same Parliament which passed the Oxford" Bill will pass a copy of it ; otherwise the structure of the Oxford Bill would scarcely have been worth copying . It was not an original and deliberate plan , but an extemporised substitute for a more complex measure which it wns found impossible to carry through the House . The original measure went too much into detail . The substitute , running into the opposite extreme , settled nothing as regarded the Colleges , but left all to bo
debated over again between the Colleges and the Commission , at great risk of miscarriage , and at the expense of a most needless repetition of argument and trouble . The question of local restrictions on fellowships for example , was one which hdd been discussed to the very dregs . The academical world , and the few non-academics who paid any attention to the matter , were at length fairly landed in the conclusion that students
ought to be elected to fellowships by industry and merit , not for having been born on the right side of a hedge . The bosom of Stupidity itself , though it quenches the lightnings of the gods , had been penetrated by a ray of conviction on this subject . But the Oxford Bill invites Stupidity to reopen the question with the Commission , and gives it an appeal to ignorance in the Privy Council , an appeal to faction in Parliament , and a veto of its own into the bargain .
The division of the initiative in College reform between two bodies is another bad feature in the Oxford Bill , which the Cambridge Bill reproduces . The Colleges have the initiative the first year ; the Commissioners , by default , the next . This principle seems to be borrowed from the Tithe Commutation Act . But the subjects are not analogous . A commutation of TJithes is pretty much the same thing , whether it is initiated by the parties themselves or by Commissioners . But the reform of a Col :
lege initiated by a Commission , may be a totally different thing from the reform of a College initiated by the College itself ; and hence strange anomalies may be expected to result . Again , the commutation of Tithes in one district is quite independent of the commutation of Tithes iu . another , and may well be " effected ^ separately , and at a different time ; but thereforrn of all the Colleges in a University , and the revision of their
statutes , ought to proceed upon a general scheme , to which the simultaneous consent of all the Colleges would be required . This is obviously the case as regards the mutual abrogation of restrictions on fellowships , and common contribution to university purposes . And what is to be done with twin foundationslike-Winchester , and I&ew Jp . ollege , __ or Eton and King ' s ? Are they to be dealt with separately , if one of them chooses to exercise its-initiative and the other does not ?
The chief point in which the Cambridge Bill departs from the Oxford Bill is the very important one of the Universit y Constitution . The government is vested , or intended to be vested ( for , according to some , tho conveyance miscarries ) in a Board consisting of foiu Heads elected by the Heads , four Professors elected by the Professors , and eight members of the Senate , elected , not by the University at large , but by the separate Colleges in turn , according to a certain cycle . This
arrangement seems to us thoroughly vicious . Oxford has now a genuine representative government , and something like a deliberative assembly , though a sinister ingenuity has cramped the latter with a sarcastic provision that it shall not debate and vote on the same day . Cambridge deserved at least as much freedom . To keep up the cliques ot Heads and Professors by making them
separate interests , ia to do pure misclnei . Une of the happiest results of tho freo constitution at Oxford has been to break up tho clique of Heads . As to the Professors , they will probably soon ascend into Heaven ; but if they deign to remain on earth , they ought to bo content to stand on their own merits , which aa yet aro not of a very dazzling order in either University , instead of demanding to havo constitutions packed for tho immediate inauguration of their divinity . The nomination of the third element 0 /
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376 \ 1 HE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 21, 1855, page 376, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2087/page/16/
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