Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

The following extracts from a letter received on the 14th May, by one of his correspondents, from an intelligent English merchant who has just returned from a visit to the Sclavonic districts of northern Hungary, on his commercial affairs, gives the latest authentic intelligence we have seen of the state of things in the Slovack counties, the only part of the country which the writer visited: —

"I am just returned from Hungary. I was exceedingly surprised to see so much enthusiasm. My candid opinion is that, even if the Russians join against them, the Hungarians will be victorious. They are certainly short of arms; if they could procure one or two hundred thousand muskets, the affair would be closed immediately. In the mountains the cultivation of the land proceeds as usual, although the whole neighbourhood was full of contending troops. As I came out of Hungary, the advanced guards were only two German miles apart. However, I found no inconvenience; the roads were quite safe; and if it were not for the guerillas, whom one expects every minute to issue from the woods, the thing would go on, for a stranger, comfortably enough. The new paper-money (Kossuth's) is taken everywhere, not only for the common necessaries of life, but also for large business transactions – the idea being that there is about equal security for Hungarian as for the Austrian bank-notes."

It must be confessed, that in circumstances calculated to try her prudence, Russia has acted with singular composure and wisdom. She abstained from interfering in the affairs of western Europe while the tide of republican frenzy was in flood. She contented herself with carefully and diligently increasing and organising her army – then, probably, in a more inefficient state than at any time during the last thirty years – and gradually concentrated her disposable troops on her western frontier, where magazines have been prepared for it. While continental Europe was convulsed by revolutions, she made no aggression – the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia was her only move in advance. She avoided giving umbrage to the people, to the sovereigns, or to the successive governments that were formed, and established a right to demand confidence in her moderation and forbearance. She came to the aid of Austria at first with a small force in a distant province, just sufficient to show that the Austrian government had her support, and not enough to excite the jealousy of Germany. Now that her military preparations are completed, she comes to protect Austria, not until she is called, and at a time when the most formidable dangers she has to encounter are such as the friends of order, triumphant in the west, and we trust dominant everywhere, would be the last to evoke. Yet it is impossible to deny that the successful execution of her present project would be a great revolution – that it would more seriously derange the relative positions of nations, and the balance of power, than any or all of those revolutions which the two last eventful years have witnessed.

The adjustment of the differences between Austria and Hungary would avert this danger – would remove all hazard of throwing the power of Hungary into the scale with the enemies of monarchy – would re-establish the Austrian empire upon the only basis on which, as it appears to us, it is possible to reconstruct it as an independent empire; and would be "a heavy blow and great discouragement" to the anarchists, whose element is strife, whose native atmosphere is the whirlwind of evil passions. But if this may not be – if Austria uses the power of Russia to enforce injustice, and, with that view, is prepared to sacrifice her own independence – we should refuse to identify the cause of monarchy and order – the cause of constitutional liberty, morality, and public faith – with the dishonest conduct of Austria, or the national antipathies and dangerous aspirations of Russia.

FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

It is not exactly the best of all times to point out things that may be amiss in, nor to find fault with either portions or the whole of institutions which have received the approving sanction of time and experience; for the bad passions of the lower and less moral orders of men, in most European nations, have of late been so completely unchained, and the débacle of the revolutionary torrent has been so suddenly overwhelming, that no extra impetus is required to be put upon it. Rather should we build up and repair the ancient dams and dikes of society, anomalous and inconvenient though they may be, than attempt to remove them, even for the sake of what may appear better ones, while the waters of innovation are still out, and when the spirit of man is brooding over them for the elaboration of some new chaos, some new incarnation of evil. Nevertheless there are a few noxious, and many harmless, anomalies and contradictions in the feudal or aristocratic constitution of society, induced by the lapse of time, the wear and tear of ages, which, though they may not admit of removal now, may demand it on the first convenient opportunity; and then on several of the sterner and more fundamental principles of feudalism in ancient days, upon which the basis of modern society really exists, but which have been lost sight of, and yet which are forced into prominent notice, and ought to be put in action once more, by the morbid tendencies of popular violence. We shall be acquitted of all desire of change for change's sake; no one will accuse us of being habitual violators of ancient things, customs, and laws: it is rather because we love them, and venerate them, and wish to revive them on account of their intrinsic excellence, that we would call our reader's attention to a few things going on around us. He need not be afraid of our troubling him with a dry treatise on the theory of government – we are no constitution-mongers: he need not expect to be bored with pages of statistical details, nor to be satiated with the nostrums of political economy. We propose making one or two very commonplace observations, professing to take no other guide than a small modicum of common sense, and to have no other object than our readers' delectation and the good of our country.

(1.) How was it that nobles came to be nobles and commons came to be commons? how was it that the great territorial properties of this kingdom were originally set agoing and maintained? and how was it that you and I, and millions of others, came to be put in the apparently interminable predicament of having to toil and struggle with the world, or to be sentenced to something like labour, more or less hard, for life; you and I, we say, you and I, and our fathers and our children? Tell us that, gentle reader, whether you be good old Tory, or moderate Conservative, or slippery Peelite, or coldblooded Whig, or profligate Radical, or demoniac Chartist? Force, my good friend – FORCE, PHYSICAL FORCE – a good strong hand, and stout arm, and a heavy sword, and brave heart, and a firm determination – and no shilly-shally hesitation as to legality or illegality, no maudlin sympathy nor compunction – these were the things that did it; these carried the day; these were the moving powers of old; they raised the lever, and they settled down society into that bed in which it has been arranging itself ever since. And right good things they were, too, in their proper time and place; and so they ever will be: they are some of the mainsprings of the world; they may become concealed in their action, they may be forgotten, they may even fall into temporary inaction, but they come out again into full play ever and anon, and, when the wild storm of human passion drives over the world in a reckless tornado, they go along with the whirlwind, and they hover all around it, and they follow it, and they reassert their permanent sway over mankind. The Norman William's barons, the noble peers of Charlemagne, the princes and marshals of Napoleon, all found their estates at the points of their swords; and, while they kept their swords bright, their estates remained intact; but, when military prowess declined, legal astuteness and commercial craft crept in, and the broad lands decreased, because the sharp point and edge were blunted. The remote origin, the first title of every crowned head and noble family of Europe, is to be traced to the sword, or has been derived from it. We speak not of parvenus, we allude to the great families of the various realms of the ancient world; all old and real nobility is of the sword, and of the sword only. The French used to express this well, and understood the true footing on which nobility ought to stand; they always talked of la noblesse de l'epée, as contradistinguished from la noblesse de la robe: the former referred to the feudal families and their descendants, the latter to those who had become ennobled for services at the bar. As for nobility granted for any commercial or pecuniary causes, they never dreamed of such a thing; or, if a spurious ennobling took place, it was deemed a glaring and an odious violation of the fundamental laws of aristocratic society.

Now the ideas of the world have become so changed, or rather so corrupted, on this point, that the prime notion of nobility no longer is attached to military tenure or service; but, on the contrary, we find titles given, nay, bought and sold, for any the most miscellaneous services, and the meridian of nobleness, of elevation, of power, altogether eliminated from the qualifications that the nobleman ought to possess. Back-stair services, lobby services, electioneering services, counting-house services, any services as well as military services, have been deemed sufficient causes for procuring a patent of nobility to those who could allege them. Titles and causes of distinction they might have been, but surely not of nobility, not of hereditary honour and distinction, the tenure and essence of which should ever be attached to territorial power gained and held by the sword. And this lowering of the tone of nobility, this communising of what ought to be ever held up as a thing apart, as a thing originating with the first beginnings of a nation, and remaining fixed till the nation becomes itself extinct, has done no good to society: it has not raised the tone of the commons, it has only lowered that of the nobles: it has emasculated the one without adding any strength to the other. In all nations, as long as the nobility have remained essentially a military order, holding their own by their own strength, the fortunes of that nation have advanced; but whenever the nobles have become degenerate, and therefore the commons licentious – the former holding only by prescriptive respect, and the latter subjected to them only in theory, not in practice – the fate of that nation has been pronounced, and its decline has already begun. The destruction and absorption of the good fiefs of France, in the time of Louis XI., laid the way for the razing of the châteaux, and the decapitation of their owners by the Cardinal de Richelieu, in the time of Louis XIII.; and this gradual degenerating process of undermining the true strength of the nobles, led to the corruption of the nation, and to its reduction to the primary starting-point of society in the reign of Louis XVI. So, too, in England, the sapping of the strength of the nobles, in the reign of Henry VIII., added to the corrupt proceedings of the times of James I., caused the Great Rebellion in the reign of his successor. The nation has never recovered from this fatal revolution of the seventeenth century. Like France, England has shone awhile, and sustained itself both in arts and arms; but the dissolving process has begun long ago with us as it did with them. One order of the state – the order of nobles – has been constantly decreasing in power and influence; and the descent towards the level of anti-social democracy seems now as easy and as broad as that to the shades of Avernus. The nobles of Russia, on the contrary, still retain their feudal power – they all draw and use the sword: their nation is on the ascendant. In Spain and Italy the nobles have descended so far as almost to have lost their claim to the title of men; while in most parts of Germany the result of recent movements has shown that the power of the nobles had long been a mere shadow; and they have evaporated in empty smoke, while the nations are fast sinking to the level of a common and savage democracy.

We would propose a remedy for this state of things. We consider the profession of arms, when joined to the holding of territorial power, as the highest form of civilisation and political excellence to which man has yet been able to rise. It constitutes that union of all the highest and best feelings of human nature with the supreme possession of power and influence over material objects – over land and the produce of land – which seems to be the ultimate and the worthy object of the good and great in all ages. And, therefore, the nearer a nobleman can revert to the principles upon which his order is, or ought to be, based, the greater security, in the working out both for himself and the nation, that the strength and dignity of the whole people shall be maintained inviolate. Of all men in the state, the noble is he who is most endangered by any approximation to effeminacy and inactivity: he is the representative, the beau ideal, of the virility of the whole nation: he is the active principle of its force – the leader, the chief agent, in building up the fortunes of his country. Let him but once degenerate from the elevating task, and he renounces the main privileges of his order, he does wrong both to his fellow-countrymen and to himself – he diminishes his own force, and he weakens their national powers. Whenever, therefore, any such departure, more or less wide, from the ancient principles of his order has taken place, let the nobleman hasten to return to them, if he would stop the course of ruin before it become too late. We would hold it to be the duty of every nobleman in this country – and we include herein his immediate descendants – to enter the profession of arms, and to adopt no other save that of afterwards serving the state in the senate: we hold it to be his duty to avoid all approximation to the engagements of commerce – we would even say of the law, of any of the learned professions. These pursuits are intended for other orders of men, not less essential to the state than the noble, but still different orders. The noble is the leader, the type, the example of public military and political strength. Let him keep to that lofty function, and discharge it and no other.

Two methods of effecting this present themselves. In the first place, a regulation might be easily and advantageously made, in connexion with the army, whereby any nobleman, or son of a nobleman, or in fact any person belonging to the class which the law might define to be noble, (for some modification is wanted on this head,) might be allowed to attach himself as a volunteer officer to any regiment, and be bound to serve in it as such, without pay. He should receive his honorary promotion the same as any other officer, and should be subject to all the same duties and responsibilities; but "pay" he should not need; himself or his family should provide for all his charges. Or, in the second place, he should serve as an officer in a national force, the constitution of which we propose and advocate below: in this case, too, entirely without pay, and subject to all the articles of war. In either instance, we think it the duty of the country to give the nobleman an especial opportunity of serving her in a military manner; and we hold it to be his especial duty – one of the most essential duties of his order, without which his order degenerates and stultifies itself – to serve as a military man, and to serve with distinction.

We often hear it said that the English are not a military people; that they do not like an army; that they have a natural repugnance to the military profession, and other similar pieces of nonsense or untruth. Such libels as these on the innate courage of an Englishman, are never uttered but by those who have something of the calf in their hearts; the wish is father to the thought in all such declarations, when seriously made; and, if alleged as matters of argument, they are used only by the morbid lovers of la paix à tout prix who infest our age and country. It is just the same as when you hear a man say soberly, that he does not like shooting, nor hunting, nor fishing; that he cannot ride, nor drive, nor swim; that he cannot abide the country, and that he prefers a constant residence in town. Such a man is not only a useless, he is positively a noxious member of society – he is an excrescence, a deformity, a nuisance, and the sooner his company is avoided the better. Such men, however, do exist, and they do actually say such things; but they are tokens of the debased and degrading effects of over-civilisation, of social degeneracy, of national humiliation; and whenever their sentiments shall come to be approved of, or assented to, by any large portion of the people, then we may be sure that the decline and fall of the nation are at hand, and that our downward course is fairly commenced. No; the men and the nation that can, in cool blood, repudiate the noble profession of arms, forfeit the virility of their character, they may do very well for the offices that slaves, and the puny denizens of crowded cities, can alone perform; but they deserve to lose the last relics of their freedom, for thus daring to contradict one of the great moral laws of nature. Force and courage have been awarded to man like any other of his faculties and passions; they were intended to be exercised, otherwise they would not have been given: their exercise is both good and necessary; and, like their great development, War, they are destined by our Maker to be the causes and instruments of moral and physical purification and renovation. As long as the mind and body of man continue what they are, the Profession of Arms and the Science of War will be held in deserved honour among the great and good of mankind.

Great evils have no doubt resulted from their use, and more especially from their abuse; but not a whit greater than from the use and abuse of any other of the faculties and propensities of man: not so much as from the spirit of deceit and oppression, which is the concomitant of trading and manufacturing operations; not so much as from the spirit of religious fanaticism and superstition which haunts the human race; not so much as from the gluttony and sensuality of civilised nations. War and Arms are analogous to the Tempest and the Thunderbolt, but they purify more than they destroy, and they elevate more than they depress. The man that does not arm in defence of his country, of his family, and of himself, deserves to die the death of a dog, or to clank about for endless years in the fetters of a slave.

It has been well shown, by one of the most philosophic of modern historians,7 that the final causes of war are indissolubly united with the moral constitution of man and human society; and that, as long as man continues to be actuated by the same passions as hitherto, the same causes of war must occur over and over again in endless cycles. Not but that the pain and misery thereby caused are undoubted evils, but that evil is permitted to form part of the moral and physical system of the world; it is what constitutes that system a state of probation and moral trial for man. When evil ceases to exist, men's evil passions shall cease also, and the world shall become another Eden; but not till then. The bearing of arms and the waging of war are no disgrace to a nation; they are an honour and a blessing to it if justly exercised, a disgrace and a curse, sooner or later, if undertaken unjustly. Believing, therefore, that the proper maintenance of a warlike spirit is absolutely essential to the welfare of any nation, and knowing how much the pecuniary and political embarrassments of our mighty though heterogeneous empire cripple the public means (in appearance at least) for keeping up a sufficient military force, we proceed to throw out the following hints for the formation of an improved description of a national military force. And we may at once observe, that it is one especially calculated to fall under the direction of the nobles of the land, and to revive that portion of the feudal spirit which depends on the proper constitution of the military resources of a great people.

The military strength of this country lies at present concentrated in the regular army, in the corps of veterans styled "pensioners," and, we may very fairly add, in the "police." We have nothing to say except in praise of these three bodies of men, the two latter of which are most useful adjuncts and supporters to the former. But we not only wish that the number of the regular army were permanently and considerably increased, we could desire also that the number of the police were augmented, and that they had more of military training about them. We shall revert to one of these points, at least, at a future period. We are also of opinion that the militia of the country should always be kept up, and regularly trained even in the intervals of war, were it for no other purpose than to maintain some faint degree of military spirit and knowledge among the common people. The question of expense and of interruption to labour does not, we confess, stop us in the least in our aspirations: we think that the country pays not a farthing too much for its military and naval forces; and, as for interruption to labour, anything that would draw off the attention of the lower orders from the grinding and degrading occupations of manufacturing slavery, we should consider one of the greatest benefits that could accrue to the country.

We wish to call attention, however, to another method – by no means a new one – of augmenting the military resources of the country, and to throw out some hints for rendering that method more efficacious than it may hitherto have been deemed. We allude to the system of volunteers. And here let not our military readers laugh: we would assure our gallant friends that we are fully aware of the thousand and one objections that will be immediately started; we know how easy it is to pooh-pooh a plan of this kind all to nothing. We can already hear them calling out about the Lumber Troop, and the City Light Horse: nay, we ourselves can actually remember that most astounding and heart-stirring event of the late war, the storming of Putney, and the battle of Wimbledon Common. We were present, gallant readers, not as actors but as very juvenile spectators of that memorable combat, to which Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo were mere farces; so we know all that is to be said against the volunteers. And now just have the goodness to let us say something for them.

A volunteer force, if it is to be merely a parade force, a make-believe force, is a "sham," a humbug, and a gross absurdity. If it is to be a "National Guard," playing the part of armed politicians, it is a dangerous nuisance, and ought never to be formed. If it is to consist of a crowd of pot-bellied citizens, with red noses and spectacles, who are afraid of firing off a musket, and cannot march above ten miles a day, nor go more than six hours without plenty of provisions tucked under their belts, nor sleep anywhere except between clean sheets and warm blankets – why, a set of wooden posts, sculptured into the human form, and painted to look like soldiers, would be far more serviceable. We are not going to commit the absurdity of advocating the formation of any such corps of men as these; but we wish to point out how a really efficient corps of volunteers might be raised throughout the kingdom, kept on a footing of constant service and readiness, costing the country not one farthing, and constituting a really useful and valuable auxiliary force to co-operate with the regular troops.

If these qualifications are to exist in any volunteer corps, then it is quite manifest that the following kinds of persons cannot form part of it. First of all, the whole generation of pot-bellied, red-nosed, counter-thumping fellows, alluded to above, would not be admissible; next, no man who is not endowed with a good quantity of bodily activity, health, and vigour of mind, could remain in its ranks; and further, no one need apply for admission who wanted merely to "play at soldiers," or whose means and occupations would not allow of his giving up regularly a certain portion of his best time to the service, and occasionally of absenting himself from home for even a considerable period – say of one, two, or more months, and proceeding wherever the government might wish him. Furthermore, no such corps could have the smallest pretensions to be effective, if it were left to its own guidance and command: it must be as much under the control, and at the orders, of the commander-in-chief – for home service – (for we do not contemplate the possibility of its being ordered abroad,) as any of the regular corps in her Majesty's army.