their own lawgivers, they should fail to institute a true law of nations. Here then,' even so cold a friend to political liberty as Hume is compelled to conclude, ‘are the advantages of free states. Though a republic should be barbarous, it necessarily, by an infallible operation, gives rise to law, even before mankind have made any considerable advances in the other sciences. On the contrary, in a monarchy law arises not necessarily from the forms of government. Monarchy, when absolute, contains even something repugnant to law.* This reasoning relates, it is true, to the growth of municipal law; but if, even in a barbarous republic, law necessarily arises in order to preserve liberty, to secure the persons and the properties of the citizens, to exempt one man from the dominion of another, and to protect every one against the violence and tyranny of his fellow-citizens,'t may we not foretell the growth, for similar reasons, of law in a republic of nations far advanced beyond barbarism ?+

* Essay XIV., 'Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.' + Id.

It will be objected, we are well aware, that an effective international law involves a universal empire, and the purchase of peace at the cost of the independence of nations. This objection rests on the assumption that sovereignty is of necessity indivisible and unlimited, and that a legislature for international affairs must consequently be either nugatory, or supreme likewise over the domestic affairs of nations; an assumption which we hope upon a future occasion to prove fallacious, but the proof requires a discussion of too much length to be added to the present pages.

IX.

THE MILITARY SYSTEMS OF EUROPE IN 1867.*

(North British Review, December, 1867.)

'WE have arrived,' observes General Trochu, in one of the ablest and most interesting of the many essays on Military Organization which the war of last year has produced, 'at one of those periods of transition in the existence of armies, which mark the end of certain systems employed in the wars of the past for the inauguration of others to be employed in the wars. of the present. It is the merit and the fortune of Prussia in 1866, as formerly in the time of the great Frederick, to have foreseen this evolution of the art of war, to have studied its conditions attentively during a long peace, to have discovered them for the most part, and to have opportunely and resolutely applied them.'t We cite the observation, not merely for the importance in itself of the double conviction of high military authority in France, that military systems have arrived at a period of transition, and that Prussia has correctly apprehended its conditions, but because the passage raises inquiries respecting the causes, objects, and tendencies of the vast armies of the Continent, which it did not fall within the purpose of General

*This Essay was written at the suggestion of the late Mr. Herman Merivale, after study on the Continent, not in books alone, of the Continental Military Systems. The author was led by observation and inquiry abroad to change considerably the views put forth by him in a previously published lecture on the military systems of Europe. Some pages relating to promotion by purchase have been omitted.

+ L'Armée Française en 1867.

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Trochu to treat of, though they are inquiries of the first importance to the people of this country, to many of whom the 'period of transition in the existence of armies' in prospect, has long been a period of general disarmament. The questions which General Trochu discusses, are, indeed, far from being military questions only. To his credit as a man and a citizen, as well as a soldier, he looks at an army not as a mere instrument of victory, but as a powerful social agent for the improvement or the corruption of a nation. Every year, he urges, an army withdraws from different parts of the body of society, and every year it returns to it a number of citizens,-Une redoubtable question se présente, sont-ils dans l'ordre moral, sont-ils dans l'ordre physique, améliorés ou dénaturés ?' Public spirit, public morality, public health, the power of the race to increase, the gradual elevation or degradation of the life of the nation in some of its most important conditions,—such is the immense theme which, for fifty years, has agitated legislation on recruiting for the army. We too, in this country, are deeply interested in the moral and social effects of different military systems, as well as in their efficiency for war, and they raise other questions. Why do these mighty armaments exist? Do they threaten war? Are they all aggressive or defensive alike? Is England safe in her present military system? Even an unreformed Parliament, full of promotion by purchase, could it have realized 'the period of transition in the existence of armies,' at which we have arrived, might have been moved to repentance by the powerful voices which have but preached in the wilderness Army Reform. Nor will the return of a reformed Parliament suffice of itself to insure the sort of army reform that is needed. The sort which eminent Parliamentary Reformers have advocated before now has been army extinction.

So many indeed are the reasons for believing that war must finally disappear before commerce and civilization, that not only is the question of the probability of war always discussed by practical men in this country with reference to some passing cloud in the political sky, but powerful speculative thinkers, both here and on the Continent, have found in the very institution of the standing armies of modern Europe an evidence of

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the cessation of warfare. Montesquieu, it is true, in a passage cited by M. Jules Simon, lamented, a century and a quarter ago, that a new plague was spreading over Europe, disordering its sovereigns so as to lead to the maintenance of inordinate numbers of troops. As soon as one State increases its forces, the others at once increase theirs, so that nothing is got by it but general ruin. Every monarch keeps upon foot all the armies he could if nations were in danger of extermination; and the name of peace is given to an effort of all against all. We are thus poor amid the riches and commerce of the whole world.' Yet Montesquieu reckoned the proportion of soldiers to the population of Europe at one in a hundred; and Adam Smith, nearly half a century later, said it was commonly computed that no greater proportion of men could be employed as soldiers by any civilized State without ruin, while now the Government of France is endeavouring to raise an army of more than 1,200,000, out of a nation of 38,000,000, that is, to make available as soldiers nearly a thirtieth of the whole population. This one fact might stagger those who believe with M. Comte (of whom the late Mr. Buckle was on this point an eminent disciple), that the tendency of the economy of modern Europe to put an end to war was shown in the establishment of permanent armies, as feudalism declined; whereby they argue (and argue with a truth which, in our opinion, militates against the conclusion drawn from the argument), that the majority of the inhabitants of each State were weaned from the practice of arms. We are of those who think, on the one hand, that the tendency of modern civilization is to substitute armed nations, as in Germany and Switzerland, for standing armies such as those of Russia and France; and, on the other hand, that the institution of standing armies, so far from tending to abolish war, created it—created it, that is to say, in the sense of hostilities on a vast scale, waged by immense forces, and protracted often for several years. The feudal militia was a defensive institution, by its structure wholly incapacitated for other than petty hostilities, by its interests at home indisposed for long or distant campaigns, and under no obligation to undertake them in the interests of a monarch. It is a remarkable example of the

error of looking at only one side of the shield, that powerful reasoners could regard as pacific institutions, the rise at the same time of military monarchies, and of a special class devoted to warfare, by their interests bound to it, placed at the disposal of a single chief who wielded the resources of a whole nation, and who was enabled by the very existence of such a class, monopolizing all military knowledge and discipline, to defy the wishes of the great body of his subjects for peace. The men of peace were disarmed, while the men of war were armed with the deadliest weapons. The mere establishment of permanent armies placed forces adequate and disposed to great wars upon foot, but they did much more to create such wars by placing at their head the very person who suffers least by the interruption of peace, who feels none of the privations of a campaign, and need incur none of its dangers, even if he takes the field in person; who can stop the war if he tires of it, who has all the pride and ambition generated by immense power and supreme rank-a rank, moreover, which, among his few equals in other nations, is proportionate not to the wealth and prosperity of the nations under his own control, disposing them to peace, but to his own military power and success. Lord Bacon, no mean authority in matters of kingcraft, treating of 'the true greatness of kingdoms,' and meaning literally the greatness of kingdoms as contradistinguished from nations, has authoritatively pronounced: 'In all experience you shall find but three things that prepare and dispose a State for war: the ambition of governors, a state of soldiers prepared, and the hard means to live of many subjects.' Nor is it an immaterial consideration that the establishment of the great military monarchies of modern Europe, with professional armies at their command, involved the cessation of the only attempt that has ever been made towards a general tribunal for the pacific adjustment of international disputes -one beneficent use of the stupendous spiritual tyranny of the Papacy. There are, we believe, two preliminary steps requisite to terminate war-in the establishment of free institutions, and the substitution of national militias for standing armies; but the danger of war can never disappear altogether until the civilized world has a common