the security of England would be seriously imperilled. Yet there is now hardly a forward schoolboy who does not know that to these very measures the present stability of our country is mainly owing. Experience, the great test of wisdom, has amply proved, that those vast schemes of reform, which the Duke of Wellington spent his political life in opposing, were, I will not say expedient or advisable, but were indispensably necessary. That policy of resisting the popular will which he constantly advised, is precisely the policy which has been pursued, since the Congress of Vienna, in every monarchy except our own. The result of that policy is written for our instruction it is written in that great explosion of popular passion, which in the moment of its wrath upset the proudest thrones, destroyed princely families, ruined noble houses, desolated beautiful cities. And if the counsel of our great general had been followed, if the just demands of the people had been refused, -this same lesson would have been written in the annals of our own land; and we should most assuredly have been unable to escape the consequence of that terrible catastrophe, in which the ignorance and selfishness of rulers did, only a few years ago, involve a large part of the civilized world.

Thus striking is the contrast between the military genius of ancient times, and the military genius of modern Europe. The causes of this decay are clearly traceable to the circumstance that, owing to the immense increase of intellectual employments, few men of ability will now enter a profession into which, in antiquity, men of ability eagerly crowded, as supplying the best means of exercising those faculties which, in more civilized countries, are turned to a better account. This, indeed, is a very important change; and thus to transfer the most powerful intellects from the arts of war to the arts of peace, has been the slow work of many centuries, the gradual, but constant, encroachments of advancing knowledge. To write the history of those encroachments, would be to write the history of the human intellect; a task impossible for any single man adequately to perform. But the subject

is one of such interest, and has been so little studied, that though I have already carried this analysis further than I had intended, I cannot refrain from noticing what appear to me to be the three leading ways in which the warlike spirit of the ancient world has been weakened by the progress of European knowledge.

The first of these arose out of the invention of Gunpowder; which, though a warlike contrivance, has in its results been eminently serviceable to the interests of peace.38 This important invention is said to have been made in the thirteenth century;39 but was not in common use until the fourteenth, or even the beginning of the fifteenth century. Scarcely had it come into operation, when it worked a great change in the whole scheme and practice of war. Before this time, it was considered the duty of nearly every citizen to be prepared to enter the military service, for the purpose either of defending his own country, or of attacking others.40 Standing armies were entirely unknown; and in their place there existed a rude and barbarous militia, always ready for battle, and always unwilling to engage in those peaceful pursuits which were then universally despised. Nearly every man

39 The consequences of the invention of gunpowder are considered very superficially by Frederick Schlegel (Lectures on the History of Literature, vol. ii. pp. 37, 38), and by Dugald Stewart (Philosophy of the Mind, vol. i. p. 262). They are examined with much greater ability, though by no means exhaustively, in Smith's Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. pp. 292, 296, 297; Herder's Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. iv. p. 301; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 470.

39 From the following authorities, it appears impossible to trace it further back than the thirteenth century; and it is doubtful whether the Arabs were, as is commonly supposed, the inventors: Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 590; Koch, Tableau des Révolutions, vol. i. p. 242; Beckmann's History of Inventions, 1846, vol. ii. p. 505; Histoire Lit. de la France, vol. xx. p. 236; Thomson's History of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 36; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 341. The statements in Erman's Siberia, vol. i. pp. 370, 371, are more positive than the evidence we are possessed of will justify; but there can be no doubt that a sort of gunpowder was at an early period used in China, and in other parts of Asia.

40 Vattel, le Droit des Gens, vol. ii. p. 129; Lingard's History of England, vol. ii. pp. 356, 357. Among the Anglo-Saxons, "all free men and proprietors of land, except the ministers of religion, were trained to the use of arms, and always held ready to take the field at a moment's warning." Eccleston's English Antiquities, p. 62. "There was no distinction between the soldier and the citizen." Palgrave's Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 200.

being a soldier, the military profession, as such, had no separate existence; or, to speak more properly, the whole of Europe composed one great army, in which all other professions were merged. To this the only exception was the ecclesiastical profession; but even that was affected by the general tendency, and it was not at all uncommon to see large bodies of troops led to the field by bishops and abbots, to most of whom the arts of war were in those days perfectly familiar. At all events, between these two professions men were necessarily divided: the only avocations were war and theology; and if you refused to enter the church, you were bound to serve in the army. As a natural consequence, every thing of real importance was altogether neglected. There were, indeed, many priests and many warriors, many sermons and many battles.42 But, on the other hand, there was neither trade, nor commerce, nor manufactures; there was no science, no literature: the useful arts were entirely unknown; and even the highest ranks of society were unacquainted, not only with the most ordinary comforts, but with the commonest decencies of civilized life.

But so soon as gunpowder came into use, there was laid the foundation of a great change. According to the old system, a man had only to possess, what he generally inherited from his father, either a sword or a bow, and he was ready equipped for the field.43 According to the

41 On these warlike ecclesiastics, compare Grose's Military Antiq. vol. i. pp. 67-8; Lingard's Hist. of England, vol. ii. pp. 26, 183, vol. iii. p. 14; Turner's Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 458, vol. v. pp. 92, 402, 406; Mosheim's Eccl. History, vol. i. pp. 173, 193, 241; Crichton's Scandinavia, Edinb. 1838, vol. i. p. 220. Such opponents were the more formidable, because in those happy days it was sacrilege for a layman to lay hands on a bishop. In 1095 his Holiness the Pope caused a council to declare, " 'Quòd qui apprehenderit episcopum omnino exlex fiat." Matthæi Paris Historia Major, p. 18. As the context contains no limitation of this, it would follow that a man became spiritually outlawed if he, even in self-defence, took a bishop prisoner.

42 As Sharon Turner observes of England under the Anglo-Saxon government, war and religion were the absorbing subjects of this period." Turner's History of England, vol. iii. p. 263. And a recent scientific historian says of Europe generally: "alle Künste und Kenntnisse, die sich nicht auf das edle Kriegs-, Rauf- und Raubhandwerk bezogen, waren überflüssig und schädlich. Nur etwas Theologie war vonnöthen, um die Erde mit dem Himmel zu verbinden." Winckler, Geschichte der Botanik, 1854, p. 56.

43 In 1181, Henry II. of England ordered that every man should have

new system, new means were required, and the equipment became more costly and more difficult. First, there was the supply of gunpowder;44 then there was the possession of muskets, which were expensive weapons, and considered difficult to manage.45 Then, too, there were other contrivances to which gunpowder naturally gave rise, such as pistols, bombs, mortars, shells, mines, and the either a sword or bow; which he was not to sell, but leave to his heir: "cæteri autem omnes haberent wanbasiam, capellum ferreum, lanceam et gladium, vel arcum et sagittas: et prohibuit ne aliquis arma sua venderet vel invadiaret; sed cùm moreretur, daret illa propinquiori hæredi suo." Rog. de Hov. Annal. in Scriptores post Bedam, p. 348 rev. In the reign of Edward I., it was ordered that every man possessing land to the value of forty shillings should keep "a sword, bow and arrows, and a dagger. Those who were to keep bows and arrows might have them out of the forest." Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. ii. pp. 301, 302. Compare Geijer's History of the Swedes, part i. p. 94. Even late in the fifteenth century, there were at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in each from four to five thousand scholars, all grown up, carrying swords and bows, and in great part gentry." Sir William Hamilton on the History of Universities, in Hamilton's Philosoph. Discussions, p. 414. One of the latest attempts made to revive archery, was a warrant issued by Elizabeth in 1596, and printed by Mr. Collier in the Egerton Papers, pp. 217-220, edit. Camden Soc. 1840. In the south-west of England, bows and arrows did not finally disappear from the muster-rolls till 1599; and in the mean time the musket gained ground. See Yonge's Diary, edit. Camden Soc. 1848, p. xvii.

"It is stated by many writers that no gunpowder was manufactured in England until the reign of Elizabeth. Camden's Elizabeth, in Kennett's History, vol. ii. p. 388, London, 1719; Strickland's Queens of England, vol. vi. p. 223, Lond. 1843; Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. i. p. 378. But Sharon Turner (History of England, vol. vi. pp. 490, 491, Lond. 1839) has shown, from an order of Richard III. in the Harleian manuscripts, that it was made in England in 1483; and Mr. Eccleston (English Antiquities, p. 182, Lond. 1847) states, that the English both made and exported it as early as 1411 compare p. 202. At all events, it long remained a costly article ; and even in the reign of Charles I., I find a complaint of its dearness, "whereby the train-bands are much discouraged in their exercising." Parliament. Hist. vol. ii. p. 655. In 1686, it appears from the Clarendon Correspondence, vol. i. p. 413, that the wholesale price ranged from about 27. 108. to 3. a barrel. On the expense of making it in the present century, see Liebig and Kopp's Reports on Chemistry, vol. iii. p. 325, Lond. 1852.

45 The muskets were such miserable machines, that, in the middle of the fifteenth century, it took a quarter of an hour to charge and fire one. Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 342. Grose (Military Antiquities, vol. i. p. 146, vol. ii. pp. 292, 337) says, that the first mention of muskets in England is in 1471; and that rests for them did not become obsolete until the reign of Charles I. In the recent edition of Beckmann's History of Inventions, Lond. 1846, vol. ii. p. 535, it is strangely supposed that muskets were first used at the battle of Pavia." Compare Daniel, Histoire de la Milice, vol. i. p. 464, with Smythe's Military Discourses, in Ellis's Original Letters, p. 53, edit. Camden Society.

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like.46 All these things, by increasing the complication of the military art, increased the necessity of discipline and practice; while, at the same time, the change that was being effected in the ordinary weapons deprived the great majority of men of the possibility of procuring them. To suit these altered circumstances, a new system was organized; and it was found advisable to train up bodies of men for the sole purpose of war, and to separate them as much as possible from those other employments in which formerly all soldiers were occasionally engaged. Thus it was that there arose standing armies; the first of which were formed in the middle of the fifteenth century, almost immediately after gunpowder was generally known. Thus, too, there arose the custom of employing mercenary troops; of which we find a few earlier instances, though the practice was not fully established until the latter part of the fourteenth century.48

The importance of this movement was soon seen, by the change it effected in the classification of European society. The regular troops being, from their discipline, more serviceable against the enemy, and also more immediately under the control of the government, it naturally followed that, as their merits became understood, the old militia should fall, first into disrepute, then be neglected,

46 Pistols are said to have been invented early in the sixteenth century. Grose's Military Antiq. vol. i. pp. 102, 146. Gunpowder was first employed in mining towns in 1487. Prescott's Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii. p. 32; Koch, Tableau des Révolutions, vol. i. p. 243; Daniel, Histoire de la Milice Française, vol. i. p. 574. Daniel (Milice Française, vol. i. pp. 580, 581) says, that bombs were not invented till 1588; and the same thing is asserted in Biographie Universelle, vol. xv. p. 248: but, according to Grose (Military Antiq. vol. i. p. 387), they are mentioned by Valturinus in 1472. On the general condition of the French artillery in the sixteenth century, see Relations des Ambassadeurs Vénitiens, vol. i. pp. 94, 476, 478, Paris, 1838, 4to; a curious and valuable publication. There is some doubt as to the exact period in which cannons were first known; but they were certainly used in war before the middle of the fourteenth century. See Bohlen, das alte Indien, vol. ii. p. 63; and Daniel, Histoire de la Milice, vol. i. pp. 441, 442.

Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 413; Daniel, Hist. de la Milice, vol. i. p. 210, vol. ii. pp. 491, 493; Œuvres de Turgot, vol. viii. p. 228.

48 The leading facts respecting the employment of mercenary troops are indicated with great judgment by Mr. Hallam, in his Middle Ages, vol. i. pp. 328-337.