Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/444

19, 1859.] wages. In a large vessel, libraries, gymnastics and games of many kinds should be procurable; music instead of screeches might be obtained by steam appliances; and even the cultivation of certain kinds of flowers and plants might go on. Dr. Johnson, who probably had no Danish blood in his veins, defined a ship to be “a prison with a chance of being drowned.” The chance of drowning may be, by proper structure, nearly extinguished, and an attractive home in which people voluntarily stay can scarcely be called a prison. All human beings are bom with some natural aptitude at which they work with a will. These aptitudes vary: but we have a very large number amongst us instinctive seamen, whom not even bad food, worse lodging, incessant drudgery, systematic tyranny, and ill-usage of all kinds, have deterred from the pursuit of their vocation. With this class of men, the naval war service — or, a better term, the naval police service — would become the most popular of all kinds of work.

“Steam has bridged the ocean“ is becoming a hackneyed phrase; and therefore certain persons take it as a corollary that the road to England is now open to French or other invasion. Railways facilitate the passage and concentration of troops; and therefore troops may be concentrated within twenty -four hours on the French coast, and steam will bring them over to the English coast instanter. Moreover, the French have Cherbourg; vessels of war, steam and others, more numerous than our own, and have the command of the narrow sea — the Manche. Steam, say certain French logicians, will enable us to use soldiers for naval purposes; steam will lay our regiments of — horse- marines— alongside British men -of -war, and they will be captured by boarding with that French commodity — Sian.

The French are admirable reasoners; they demonstrate to a fixity, but they frequently lack one thing in their logic — to take in all the data. Other things being equal, it is a generally acknowledged fact that the Gallic Cock is by no means a likely bird on salt water; in short, by no means a match for the Norse Gannet. The Gannet would, in contest on his native element, unquestionably drown the Cock. Chanticleer would go down with a gurgling in his throat, extinguishing his would-be note of victory, and he would be buried in the deep amidst electric cables and all the mysterious matter that has accumulated from the earliest ages when the Phoenician keels first furrowed the narrow seas. It is quite true that there was a time when from Normandy sailed a force that established itself in England; but that force was not Celtic but Norse — kinsmen of our own ancestry— -of very little sense of justice, but strong men withal; and so England absorbed them, and grew out of them a Richard as well as a John: and so has she gone on absorbing, from time to time, the best blood of all the Continent, whenever men of more than ordinary intelligence were driven from their hearths by despotic power jealous of their moral force.

This question of steam cuts two ways. The French may now cross the Channel, and invade England — if they can. And if they did, and succeeded, farewell the hopes of the world for awhile, and re-enter the dark ages. If this thing were possible, backed by hordes of Europe’s savages, the remnants of our race would again cross the sea in ships and people that magnificent land to be found on the northern shores of the Pacific, North Oregon, where law and order, and not despotism, is building up a new empire in a different sense from European empires.

But steam cuts two ways. The elder Bonaparte could not cross to invade England, because he had no steam. But neither could England enter the harbours of France to take away or destroy in mass all his means of transport, simply because she had no steam. With steam, our sea- dogs would not have lain off French ports to watch their game, and make prey of solitary stragglers from time to time. They would have swooped down in mass, and made assurance doubly sure, as they did at Copenhagen, so soon as they knew that the Danish fleet was virtually made over to the French emperor.

We are a peaceable people; we want no war; and, according to our lights, we essay to do that justice to all the world that we would the world should do unto us. We want to work and trade, and make progress in all those things that reclaim the world from the wilderness. Providence for wise purposes has created the Celtic race. They represent the elastic power of the universe, without which all would fall into gravity, stagnation, inaction. Elasticity held down by gravity becomes a working power, and thus Celt and Saxon and other cognate races constitute English- men. Take away the gravitating power, and the elastic force eternally bubbles up in waste without constituting a power, or becomes from time to time destructive for want of being set to regular work. It goes into Sian: France, like Ireland, being too Celtic, has a tendency to make war in the absence of other excite- ment. From the Celt comes poetry, painting, music, sculpture — most of those things which give a sensuous charm to life; and if he cannot expend his energy on these things, he “dies for want of a bating,” runs after la gloire, or wants, as they say in Kentucky, “kivering up in salt to prevent him spiling for want of a fight.” The Celtic nature follows after chieftains, not after institutions, and a despot thus finds in a Celtic army a ready instrument for oppressive purposes.

It is a conventional fashion to speak with great respect of the French Emperor as the soul of chivalry, the soldier of liberty, and so on. Perhaps! If a man has universally spoken truth, people have no right to disbelieve him: but the French Emperor has more than once said one thing and done another. He professes to have gone to Italy to drive out the oppressive Austrians and restore Italy to freedom. His opponents say that he means to keep Italy for himself, directly or indirectly, now the war is over. Setting aside the chivalry as not yet proven, we can understand that this act may finally sheath the knives of the Carbonari against his person; and any how, if he