1. In which John St. John Long's discoveries are ex- amined, and his claims to the confidence of the British Public are criticised, by a Graduate of the University 2. Discoveries in the Science and Art of Healing, by John St. John Long, Esq. M. R. S. L.; M. R. A. S. &c. ; together with the evidence upon which the author XIV. THE ANATOMY OF SOCIETY. By Augustus St. John. 482 THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. JANUARY, 1831. ART. I.-1. Constitutional Code for the use of all nations professing liberal opinions. Chap. X. Defensive Force. By Jeremy Ben tham, Esq.-8vo. Heward. 1830. 2. Bataille de Paris. Par le lieutenant-général Allix.-Paris. 1830. 3. Military Events of the late French Revolution. By an Officer of the Garde Royale. From the French.-Murray. 1830. 5. Evénemens de Bruxelles.-Brussells. 1830. OF the treatise at the head of this list, there would be difficulty in determining whether it is most remarkable, that it should have been printed before the events of last July, or that it should have been kept under a bushel after. To drag it from its unjust, and indeed unscriptural, hiding-place, and to garnish it with such small fry of ephemeral productions as may illustrate its importance and extend its effects, will be the object of the Article that follows. It was A military force has always been a mystery. a thing that a nation ought to have, and ought not to have. When the public is in bodily fear,-as, for instance, when its sleep is disturbed by the apprehension of gun-boats in the Channel, or the dread of waking with its capacious throat cut from ear to ear by internal insurrection,-then a military force, like Edie Ochiltree in the novel, is cockered up as something exceedingly worthy to be praised. But when the fit of fear is over, it is found out (as may be true enough) that the guest is what most people could do without, and at best but a dangerous kind of vagrant in masquerade, viewed everywhere with suspicion not unmingled with dislike. In this state of things it was matter of no ordinary interest, to his own country and the world, to see a great publicist step forward to take the dilemma by the horns. But the importance was incalculably enhanced, by the unparalleled conjuncture VOL. XIV.-Westminster Review. B under which the circumstance took place. It is manifest that or ever the violet had blossomed, or the vine put forth her tender grapes, a vision had fallen on the seer and a sight upon the aged, and he had seen-not a he-goat that pushed northward and southward, nor a ram that pushed eastward and westward-but two millions of National Guards marching to the sound of the Marseillaise, and all nations, and languages, and tongues, applauding in their train. In brief, he had beheld a free people in the paulò post futurum; and he indited it in a book, and caused it to be engraven as on a rock, that they that come after may read, and the bands of the oppressed be loosed. -- If a disinterested spectator were asked to what single circumstance in the history of the existing European generation he would attribute the greatest mass of human suffering,-the longest list of broken bones, and they are evils, and broken hearts, and they are greater, -the largest crop of hopes destroyed and expectations trampled on, of cities ruined and families dishonoured,-the heaviest freights of worldly happiness wrecked and scattered, to gratify the appetites of the smallest number and those the most unworthy, the result could hardly fail to be, that next after the existence of the great Moloch in whose name and to whose honour these sacrifices have been made, he would ascribe it to the preponderating physical force which has been concentrated in the hands of regular or stipendiary armies. From which conclusion the step would be a small one to the next,-that in proportion as the force of regular armies has been neutralized and kept in check by either the actual or virtual operation of a superior strength in the hands of the rest of the community, has been the degree of safety, honour, freedom and all other good things, which has fallen to the share of those in whom is the real fee simple of the interests of the society. In so much that the ratio between one of these forces and the other, (under certain limitations through the necessity for some positive quantity of that from which danger arises), may be considered as the measure of all public good, so far as the same is dependent on the just regulation of the physical powers existing within a given political community. And if the countries in which this ratio is the greatest, may be considered as occupying the highest places in the scale of human improvement,-it seems to follow that one in which the proportion should be none at all, (as would be the consequence of the removal of all counterbalance, or in other words the disarming of the mass of the community), would present the zero or lowest depth, to which all other nations might refer, in calculating their rates of comparative degradation. As intimated above, the dangerous force cannot be entirely removed. If it were removed tomorrow, it would only be to remake it, or something equivalent, the day after. Whether the case may be altered at some future period, it is not easy absolutely to determine; though there may be many reasons to suppose it will. When mankind shall have further emerged from the mists in which they have been born, and which they have been taught to take for light;-when new phases shall have been witnessed of the grand process by which man has been raised from a grovelling barbarian to his present degree of partial information and improvement;-when something like reasonable governments shall have been established throughout the influential masses of the human family, and it shall have been generally discovered, first, that government has an object, and secondly, that the way to obtain this object is to go the way that leads to it and not the opposite ;-when men shall have admitted, and shall have ceased to persecute one another for believing, that common sense and reason may be applied to the direction of a government as of a line-of-battle ship, and that something may be done better than letting it drift before the wind, or than committing it and all on board to the arbitrary direction of an hereditary pilot ;-when they shall have found out the gross folly, the profound blunders, the desperate inanity, and the low fraud, of all or most of the pretexts on which wars have been habitually waged and contests erected;—when they shall have thoroughly convinced themselves that nine-tenths of these disputes, and ninety-nine hundredths of the remainder, were begun, carried on, and prolonged, with no veritable object but that of finding keep('provent,' as Captain Dalgetty has it) for a certain few out of the purses of the rest, and that the war-cries brought to aid have been so many clumsy frauds, in which patriotism' meant Open us your pockets,' and 'courage' meant Throw yourselves under our Jaggernaut upon the signal;'-when they shall have been penetrated and soaked with the persuasion, that wars have always been hoaxes on one side and generally on two, and that, notably, the longest and heaviest with which our own countrymen have any personal acquaintance, were founded on nothing but the resolution of one description of persons, that not a shilling in the hands of the industrious classes should remain unspent as long as it could be expended with the prospect of securing the power of taking another shilling for themselves;-when nations shall have compared notes, and have found out, in the words of the old presbyterian Colonel who fell at Preston Pans, how shame fully and scandalously they have been befooled ;'-it would be hard indeed, if some progress was not made towards diminishing the demand for arms and men to carry them, and reducing the magnitude of the perilous element in the measure of the public safety. As sure as sheep are bred in Leicestershire with little heads, the fools of the next generation will be smaller fools than the fools of the present. There will be an awful reckoning for the wisdom of ancestors, when ours is grown old enough to come under that predicament; and it would be fearful folly to measure the imbecility of future generations by the standard of our own. It is conceded however, that for the present at least, somebody must be kept to fight. If, then, men are to fight, whom are they to fight? secondly, whom are they not to fight? Certainly not those who pay for them. But if the fighters are set to do it, how can it be helped? Only as men help themselves against those who rob on the highway,-by waiting till they can get rid of it, and no longer. And how can it be got rid of? Heaven knows. But there is an easy way to keep it down, if ever it should be down; and that is, to keep a stronger force of honest men. If indeed the public could be persuaded to say to the rogues, "O rogues, keep us. We beg you to eat of our meat, and drink of our beer; and thus shall you be fat and well-liking, to fire upon us when there shall be occasion. Above all things visit us, we pray you, and see that we have no arms; for so might we be tempted, and your purpose concerning us fail. We are poor rascals, and wish to be poorer; our daughters also are exceedingly at your service, whenever you may please to require them. We know, and have been told by authority, that such things are the necessary consequence of your coming among us; God forbid that we should blame you for a necessary consequence," if there was any chance of finding a community with brains of calf and hearts of hound to speak in this manner, the vocation of the spoilers might last for a time that has no limit. But then, every body knows that the chance is nothing. It is only in matters included within the magic sound of politics,' that men can be persuaded to lay aside their wits. No man is bound to be an ass, except upon public account. Neither the squirehood nor the priesthood can persuade any body to prop open his gates, that the pigs may run into his potato-field. It is only when the thing is to be done on a national scale, that they can persuade men to pay both for the props and for the herd of swine. Such is the state of things as it ought not to be; next, for the |