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 A KETROSPECTIVE ENQUIRY. 83 no part of the mechanism by which England chap. managed war - business at any other -times. ^^' Their splendid sway over her fortunes was not a continuance but — on the contrary — an inter- ruption of the methods which she normally used ; and, to speak of her accustomed system as one recommended for public confidence by the glories of the ' Wellington reign ' would be hardly a less flat perversion than insisting on Cromwell's ascendant in Europe as a ground for trusting the Stuarts. Ear from leaning on mere Palace wisdom, it was during the happy abey- ance of ' personal ' sovereignty brought about in 1809, that England, then once more a 'State' ranging free from the ' untoward King George,' and finding a commander in Wellington, proved able to break the spell which, since the great days of Chatham, had palsied her land-service strengtb. Thus, to answer with yet more exactness the question at the head of this chapter : — the forces 'made to work brilliantly in what have been ' called the great days ' were — not the ancient bits of machinery brought out by our people for use when entering upon their new war with Eussia, but — expedients contrived in 1809, which, before the end of the year next suc- ceeding the fall of Napoleon, had, all of them, ceased to exist