The English Whigs are decidedly unlucky. Hardly has Palmer- 
ston fallen from office for having “left England without an ally, 
indeed without a friend on the Continent of Europe”, hardly has 
the first commotion surrounding his fall'? subsided, when the 
whole press is resounding with cries of war and in this connection 
is bringing to light a morass of maladministration in the 
departments of war and the navy sufficient to break the neck of 
more than one ministry. 

Ever since 1846 various military figures had been drawing the 
country’s attention to the possibility of an invasion of England if 
there was a war with France. At that time the danger of such a 
war was too remote however, and the Quixotic manner adopted by 
these first alarmists merely excited laughter. General Head in 
particular acquired a not exactly enviable celebrity from that time 
on by his continual appeals to the nation to strengthen the 
national defences. In this context it should not be forgotten 
moreover that the aged Wellington was likewise declaring the 
existing coastal fortifications to be extremely inadequate. 

Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état however suddenly imparted a 
completely new significance to this debate. John Bull at once 
realised that the French military dictatorship, that parody of the 
Consulate, would in all probability embroil France in war, and that 
in these circumstances an attempt might very well be made to 
avenge Waterloo.'?? The most recent exploits of the English 
military forces were not exactly brilliant; at the Cape the Kaffirs 
were consistently victorious, and even on the Slave Coast an 
attempted English landing had been decisively beaten off by naked 
Negroes, despite European tactics and cannon.'*? What would be 

the fate of the English soldiers once they came up against the far 
more dangerous “Africans” from the  proving-ground of 
Algeria? '*' And who could guarantee that such an unscrupulous 
adventurer as Louis Bonaparte would not one morning, without 
the tedious formality of a declaration of war, appear on the 
English coast with ten or twelve steamships packed full of troops 
and a dozen ships of the line to back them up, and attempt a 
march on London? 

It was undeniably a serious matter; the Government at once 
gave orders for new batteries to be installed at the entrances to the 
major harbours on the south and south-east coasts. But the public 
also took the matter seriously, and in a way which threatened to 
become very disagreeable for the Government. In particular there 
were some enquiries into the availability of forces, and it was 
found that at that moment, even if Ireland were reduced to the 
bare minimum, not more than 25,000 men and 36 cannon with 
draught-animals could be turned out for the defence of Great 
Britain, and that, as to the fleet, at present not one ship of 
significance in the ports was ready to sail to prevent a landing. It 
was found, as the Kaffir war had already shown, that the 
equipment of the British soldier impedes his mobility and is 
thoroughly unpractical; it was found that his weapons are by no 
means on a par with those of other European armies, and that 
there is not a soldier in England with a gun remotely comparable 
to the Prussian needle-gun or the rifle used by the French 
sharpshooters and riflemen. In the Commissariat of the Navy cases 
of quite outrageous corruption and negligence were discovered, all 
of which was exaggerated to mammoth proportions by alarmists and 
place-hunters. 

The affair would seem at first sight only to concern the English 
aristocrats, rentiers and bourgeois who would be the first to suffer 
from a French invasion and possible conquest. But it must not be 
forgotten that the independent development of England, the slow 
but sure fighting-out of the conflict between bourgeoisie and 
proletariat, a conflict which is furthest advanced here, is of the 
utmost importance for the development of Europe as a whole. 
Although this peculiarly methodical development in England may, 
as in 1848 and previously in the years following 1793, sometimes 
be a temporary obstacle in the path of the momentarily victorious 
revolutionaries of the Continent, fundamentally it is nevertheless 
of a far more revolutionary nature than all these transient 
continental struggles put together. Whilst the great French 
Revolution foundered on the conquest of Europe, England 

revolutionised society with the steam engine, conquered the 
world market, increasingly wrested power from all those 
classes left behind by history and prepared the ground for the 
great, decisive struggle between the industrial capitalist and the 
industrial worker. It was of the greatest significance for the 
development of the whole of Europe that Napoleon never 
managed to fling 150,000 men across from Boulogne to Folkes- 
tone and to conquer England with the veterans of the Republican 
armies. During the Restoration, when the Continent was left to the 
tender mercies of those myrmidons of legitimacy’? so aptly 
portrayed by Béranger, in England the party of the die-hards, the 
Tories, was suffering its first major rupture caused by Canning’s 
Ministry, which already had very bourgeois features, and Canning 
and later Peel were beginning that gradual undermining of the 
English Constitution which has since continued without pause and 
which must very shortly reach the point where the whole rotten 
edifice comes crashing to the ground. This undermining of the 
old institutions of England and the basis of this undermining 
process, the incessant revolutionising of English society by 
large-scale industry are quietly going on, heedless of whether 
revolution or counter-revolution is for the moment carrying the 
day on the Continent; and if this movement is slow, it is however 
sure and never takes a backward step. The defeat of thé Chartists 
on April 10, 1848,'** was exclusively a defeat and decisive rejection 
of foreign political influence; it is not continental political 
upheavals but world-wide trade crises, direct material blows calling 
into question the livelihood of each individual, which are the 
mainsprings of development in England. And now, when there 
are unmistakable signs that the final removal from political power 
of all the traditional classes by the industrial bourgeoisie and thus 
the dawn of the decisive day of battle between it and the industrial 
proletariat are imminent, a disturbance of this development now, 
even a temporary conquest of England by the rapacious 
praetorians of December 2, would have the gravest consequences 
for the European movement as a whole. Only in England has 
industry attained such dimensions that it is the focal point of the 
whole national interest, of all the conditions of existence for every 
class. But industry consists on the one hand of the industrial 
bourgeoisie and on the other of the industrial proletariat, and all 
the other elements comprising the nation are increasingly grouped 
around these opposed classes. Here therefore, where the only 
point that matters is who shall rule, the industrial capitalists or the 
industrial workers, here, if anywhere, is the ground where the class 

struggle in its modern form can be decided and where the 
industrial proletariat on the one hand has the strength to win 
political power and on the other finds the material means, the 
productive forces which enable it to make a total social revolution 
and ultimately to eliminate class contradictions. And it is certainly 
the supreme interest of the whole proletarian party in Europe to 
ensure that this development in England, which is leading to the 
greatest intensification of the contradiction betwéen the two 
industrial classes and ultimately to the defeat of the ruling class by 
the oppressed, is not as a result of foreign conquest deflected, its 
momentum diminished and the decisive struggle postponed for an 
indefinite period. 

What, then, are the prospects? 

First and foremost, a country such as Great Britain, which 
without Ireland numbers 22 million afd with Ireland 29 million 
inhabitants, cannot be simply taken by surprise attack. The 
alarmists cite the example of Carthage, which, dispersing its fleets 
and armies to its remotest possessions, twice succumbed to a 
surprise attack by the Romans.’ But, apart from the totally 
altered conditions of warfare, the Roman landing in Africa in the 
Second Punic War only became possible after the flower of the 
Carthaginian armies had been destroyed in Spain and Italy and 
the Punic fleets driven from the Mediterranean; the surprise 
attack was no such thing but a very substantial military operation 
and the quite natural culmination of a long war which in its final 
stages ran consistently in Rome’s favour. And the Third Punic 
War was scarcely a war at all but simply the crushing of the 
weaker party by a party ten times stronger; it was somewhat like 
Napoleon’s confiscation of the Venetian Republic.’* At present, 
however, France does not stand where she did in 1797, nor does 
England resemble Venice at the end of its days. 

Napoleon considered at least 150,000 men necessary to conquer 
England. At that time England admittedly had many more soldiers 
at her disposal but also a much smaller population and industrial 
resources. And nowadays, however insignificant the available 
power of the English at this moment may be, at least as many 
would be required to conquer England. A glance at the map shows 
that any invasion army which landed in England would have to 
advance at least as far as the Tees, the Tyne or even the Tweed; if 
it halted at any point short of that, all the resources of the 
industrial districts would remain in the hands of the defenders, 
and in the face of the ever growing power of the latter it would 
have to man lines extremely deficient in marked military features 

and far too extended for its forces. The area south of the 
above-mentioned rivers, i.e. England proper, numbers 16 million 
inhabitants and would demand the detaching of such forces to 
secure communications, lay siege to or occupy the coastal 
fortifications and suppress the inevitable national uprising, that 
only very few would remain available for effective operations on 
the Scottish border. And however well they were commanded, it is 
unlikely that fewer than 150,000 men could conquer England and 
prevail in the face of rebellion within the country and regular 
warfare from the direction of Scotland and Ireland. 

Now, by fresh levies and skilled concentration 150,000 men can 
of course be assembled at some point on the north coast of France, 
but this would take at least a month or two. And in this time 
England could concentrate quite a respectable naval force in the 
Channel, partly by calling on the Tagus fleet** and steamships 
from other nearby stations, and partly by mobilising the ships laid 
up in the ports, whilst within a further month all the steamships 
and some of the sailing ships from the Atlantic stations and from 
Malta and Gibraltar could be to hand. The landing army would 
therefore have to be ferried across, if not all at once, then at least 
in a few large detachments, since sooner or later communications 
with France would in any case be interrupted. At least 50,000 men 
would have to be landed at a time and the whole army therefore 
in three crossings. And furthermore, men-of-war could not be 
used at all or only to a limited extent for the transporting of 
troops in this operation, since they would have to ward off the 
English fleet. And France could not assemble transport for 50,000 
men along with the necessary artillery and munitions in her 
Channel ports within six weeks, even if she were to requisition 
neutral shipping. However each day by which the expedition is 
postponed represents a further advantage for England, for time is 
all she needs in order to concentrate her fleet and train her 
recruits. 

If however consideration of the English fleet precludes ferrying 
the landing army of 150,000 men across in more than three 
detachments, consideration of England’s land-power must also 
forbid any soldier worth his salt to risk the crossing to England 
with fewer than 50,000 men at a time. We have seen that in the 
circumstances most favourable to an invasion, the English would 
still have a period of one or two months to prepare for such a 
contingency; only someone who did not know them could assume 
them to be incapable of organising a land-army in this time which 
would have no difficulty in driving an advance guard of 50,000 

men into the sea before support arrived. It should be remembered 
that embarkation can only take place between Cherbourg and 
Boulogne and the landing only between the Isle of Wight and 
Dover, i.e. within a stretch of coast that is at no point more than 
four days’ good marching distance from London. It should be 
remembered that embarkation and landing depend on wind and 
tide, that the English fleet in the Channel would offer resistance, 
and that between the first and second landings perhaps eight to 
ten days and at the very least four would therefore elapse, since 
the main body of the troops would have to be transported in 
sailing ships and picked up along the entire length of the coast 
from Cherbourg to Boulogne; a “camp at Boulogne” !*’ cannot be 
set up on the spur of the moment. In these circumstances it is 
unlikely that anything will be attempted until at least 70,000- 
80,000 men can be flung across at one time, and for this purpose 
transport would first have to be found, which in turn requires 
time. However, since with each week by which the expedition is 
delayed, England’s defensive strength will grow more rapidly than 
the enemy’s transport and naval power, the attackers’ position will 
become increasingly unfavourable; they will soon reach the point 
where they cannot risk anything unless they are able to ferry 
150,000 men across at one time, and even they would encounter 
such resistance that they would be certain of eventual annihilation 
unless a reserve of some 100,000 men were subsequently 
despatched. 

In a word, the conquest of England cannot be accomplished by 
means of a surprise attack. If the whole Continent were to unite to 
that end, it would need a year merely to find and assemble 
transport alone—more than England needs to put her coasts into 
a state of defence, concentrate a navy which would be a match for 
all the continental fleets combined and could prevent them joining 
forces, and assemble an army which would make it impossible for 
any enemy to remain on English soil. 

National feeling amongst the English is at this particular 
moment more intense than at any time since 1815, and the grave 
danger of an invasion would lend it an altogether new impetus. 
Furthermore, the population of Great Britain is by no means as 
unmilitary as it is made out to be; the bourgeoisie, the petty 
bourgeoisie and the proletariat of the big cities are admittedly 
much less familiar with fire-arms and therefore less fitted for the 
conduct of civil war than the corresponding classes on the 
Continent. But the population as a whole has a great deal of 
warlike spirit and contains very useful military elements. Nowhere 

are there more hunters and poachers, i.e. semi-trained light 
infantry and sharpshooters; and the 40,000-50,000 mechanics and 
engineers are better prepared for the arms workshops, the 
artillery and service in the engineering corps than any comparable 
number of chosen men in whatever continental country one cares 
to name. The ground itself, almost entirely devoid of major 
military features virtually up to the Scottish border, is hilly broken 
country, tailor-made for small-scale warfare. And if hitherto 
guerrilla warfare has only been successful in comparatively 
sparsely populated countries, in the case of a serious attack 
England in particular might well be able to demonstrate that in 
very densely populated countries, e.g. in the almost continuous 
labyrinth of buildings in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, guerrilla 
warfare can be rather effective. 

With regard to raids aimed at plundering the wealthy ports, 
destroying depots and so on, England is at present admittedly in 
an exposed position. The fortifications are scarcely worth mention- 
ing. Provided there are no ships lying at Spithead it is possible to 
sail calmly right up to the entrance of Southampton Water and 
land sufficient troops to exact a levy of whatever size desired from 
Southampton. Woolwich could perhaps be occupied and destroyed 
at present although this would be a somewhat greater undertak- 
ing. Liverpool’s only defence is a pitiful battery of 18 iron ship’s 
cannon lacking any form of aiming device and manned by eight to 

ten artillerymen and half a company of infantry. But with the 
~ exception of Brighton, all the important English coastal towns are 
situated within deep bays or far up rivers and have natural 
defences in the form of sand-banks and rocks with which only the 
native pilots are familiar. Any attacker attempting to find his way 
without a pilot through these narrow channels, which are mostly 
only navigable by large ships at high tide, runs the risk of losing 
more than he could hope to make away with, and if such an 
expedition met with any resistance or the slightest unexpected 
obstacle it would have as disastrous an outcome as the Danish 
expedition against Eckernfoérde in 1849.'*° On the other hand a 
rapid landing of 10,000-20,000 men from steamships in some 
rural area and a short plundering raid against small country 
towns, the positive results of which would necessarily be meagre, 
would admittedly be very easy to accomplish and could not be 
prevented at all at present. 

All these fears would however melt away of their own accord as 
soon as the Tagus fleet, the North American squadron and some 
of the steamboats pursuing the slave-ships between Brazil and 

Africa were recalled to England and at the same time the ships 
laid up in the naval ports were mobilised. That would suffice to 
prevent any surprise attack and delay any serious attempt at 
invasion long enough to allow England to take the necessary 
further action. 

Meanwhile the alarm will have the positive effect of terminating 
the absurd policy of maintaining 800 floating cannon in the 
Mediterranean, 1,000 in the Atlantic and 300 each in the Pacific 
and the Indian Ocean, whilst there is not a single ship to protect 
the coasts at home; and of engaging in interminable and 
inglorious wars with Negroes and Kaffirs, while troops are 
urgently needed in the home country. The cumbersome, heavy 
and in every respect antiquated equipment of the army, the 
boundless carelessness and nonchalance of the military and naval 
administration, and the gross nepotism, the bribery and the fraud in 
these departments will by and large be eliminated. The industrial 
bourgeoisie will finally rid itself of the Peace Congress and Peace 
Society humbug, which exposed it to so much well-deserved mockery 
and did such harm to its political progress and thus to the whole 
development of England. And if war were to break out, it may very 
easily happen, owing to the well-known irony of world history which 
is enjoying an unprecedented vogue at present, that Messrs. Cobden 
and Bright, in their dual capacity as members of the Peace Society '”° 
and as men who may become ministers in the near future, would 
have to wage a stubborn war, perhaps against the whole continent. 

Manchester, January 23, 1852 

II 

Parliament is due to meet next Tuesday, on February 3. Of the 
three principal issues which will take up the early debates, we have 
briefly discussed two already: Palmerston’s dismissal' and the 
state of the defences in the event of a war with France. There 
remains the third, which for the development of England is by far 
the most important: electoral reform. 

The new Reform Bill which Russell is due to present at the very 
outset will provide sufficient opportunity to examine the general 
significance of electoral reform in England more closely. For 
today, since we are only concerned with communicating and 
elucidating a number of rumours about this bill, the observation 

will suffice that in this whole matter the immediate issue 1s solely 
how much of their political power will be retained by the 
reactionary or conservative classes, i.e. the landed aristocracy, the 
rentiers, the stock-exchange speculators, the colonial landowners, 
the shipping magnates and a section of the merchants and 
bankers, and how much they will surrender to the industrial 
bourgeoisie, which heads all the progressive and revolutionary 
classes. For the present we are not concerned here with the 
proletariat at all. 

The Daily News, the voice of the industrial bourgeoisie in 
London and a good source in such matters, gives some informa- 
tion about the Whig Ministry’s new Reform Bill. According to this 
information, the intended reforms would touch upon three aspects 
of the British electoral system. 

Hitherto every Member of Parliament had to show that he 
owned landed property worth at least £300 before he could be 
admitted. However this condition, in many cases embarrassing, 
was almost always evaded by bogus purchases and bogus contracts. 
It had long ago become ineffective as far as the industrial 
bourgeoisie was concerned; it is now to be dropped completely. Its 
abolition is one of the “six points” of the proletarian People’s 
Charter,'*! and it is interesting to observe how one of these six 
points (they are all six very middle-class and have already been 
implemented in the United States) is already being officially 
acknowledged. 

Hitherto the electoral system was organised in the following 
way: according to ancient English custom some Members were 
sent by the counties* and some by the towns. Any person wanting 
to vote in a county had either to own land with an annual value 
of £2 entirely in his own right (freehold property)” or hold rented 
land with an annual value of £50. In the towns on the other hand 
any man could vote who occupied a house whose rent was £10 
and who paid the poor-rate corresponding to that amount. Whilst 
in those towns which sent Members, the mass of small tradesmen 
and craftsmen, i.e. all the petty bourgeoisie, were admitted to the 
suffrage by this arrangement, in the county elections the 
aristocracy’s tenants-at-will,° i.e. tenants who could be given notice 
to quit from one year to the next and who were therefore 

completely dependent on their landlords, represented the over- 
whelming majority. Last year Mr. Locke King proposed extending 
the norm of £10 rents, which applied in the towns, to the counties 
as well, and obtained a large majority for this proposal against the 
ministers in a sparsely attended House. It is said that Russell now 
intends to reduce the amount for the counties to £10 and for the 
towns to £5. The effect of such a measure would be very 
significant. In the towns it would immediately give the franchise to 
the better paid among the proletariat, which would make the 
election of Chartist representatives in some large towns very 
probable, whilst in the medium-sized and smaller towns the 
industrial bourgeoisie would receive an enormous increase in votes 
and in parliamentary seats. And in the counties all citizens of small 
and moderate means in small towns without their own parliamen- 
tary representatives would at once be admitted to the suffrage; 
they would constitute the overwhelming majority in most cases 
and by their numbers and relative independence of the few great 
noble families who control the counties at present they would put 
an end to the electoral terrorism hitherto practised by these 
magnates. Furthermore this rural petty bourgeoisie is even now 
increasingly succumbing to the influence of the industrial 
bourgeoisie and would thus open up a significant number of the 
counties to them. 

The electoral constituencies have hitherto varied enormously in 
size and importance; the number of representatives bore no 
relationship whatsoever to the size of the population or number of 
electors. One or two hundred electors in one place sent as many 
representatives as six to eleven thousand electors in another place. 
This inequality was particularly marked in the towns; and 
particularly the small towns with few electors were the scene of the 
most scandalous bribery (e.g. St. Albans) or absolute electoral 
dictatorship by this or that great landowner. According to the 
report in The Daily News eight of the smallest towns with the right 
to elect a Member of Parliament are now to be deprived of their 
representatives and the remaining small towns which elect 
Members of Parliament are to be lumped together with other 
neighbouring country towns, up to now represented only in the 
counties, in such a way that the size of the electorate is 
significantly increased. This would resemble the system of urban 
grouping which has existed in Scotland ever since the Union with 
England (1707).'*? That the industrial bourgeoisie may likewise 
expect an increase of political power from such a measure, timid 
though it is, is proved by the outstanding importance which they 

have for a long time attached to the equalisation of the electoral 
constituencies, over and above any other issue of parliamentary 
reform. In addition it is reported that London and Lancashire, in 
other words two of the principal centres of the industrial 
bourgeoisie, are to receive increased representation in Parliament. 

If Russell really intends to present this Bill, then according to 
past experience, this is indeed a great deal for the little man. It 
appears that Peel’s laurels will not let him rest and that he too has 
resolved to be “bold” for once. This boldness is admittedly 
accompanied by all the timorousness and cautious circumspection 
of the English Whig, and in the present state of public opinion in 
England will appear bold to no one but himself and his Whig 
colleagues. But after the hesitation, vacillation and second 
thoughts, after the repeated and always unsuccessful putting- 
out of feelers with which this diminutive peer has occupied 
his time since the end of the previous session, one might never- 
theless have expected less than the above proposals—always 
providing of course that he does not change his mind before 
Tuesday.'* 

The industrial bourgeoisie, it does not need to be spelled out, 
are demanding a great deal more than that. They are demanding 
household suffrage,’ 1.e. the vote for every man occupying a house 
or part of a house on which he is required to pay rates, voting by 
ballot and a total revision of constituency boundaries to ensure 
equal representation for equal numbers of electors and equal 
wealth. They will haggle hard and long with the ministry and 
extract every possible concession from it before agreeing a price 
for their support. The English industrialist is a good businessman 
and will certainly dispose of his vote for the highest price 
obtainable. 

Incidentally it is already now becoming evident that even the 
above ministerial minimum of electoral reform cannot but have 
the effect of strengthening the power of that class which already 
controls England in practice and is making giant strides towards 
the political recognition of its hegemony: the industrial 
bourgeoisie. The proletariat, whose independent struggle for its 
own interests against the industrial bourgeoisie will not begin until 
such time as the political supremacy of that class is established, the 
proletariat will in any circumstances also derive some advantage 
from this electoral reform. How great this advantage will be 
however depends simply on whether the debate and eventual 

establishment of electoral reform occurs before the trade crisis 
breaks or rather coincides with it; for the proletariat, for the time 
being, only plays an active part, at the front of the stage, at great 
moments of decision, like Fate in classical tragedy. 

Manchester, January 30, 1852