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 


England 199 


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 


8*