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For England we may say of this case–Transeat in exemplum!

Great Britain, on the contrary, is limited in her recruiting-grounds by modern political relations as respects Europe: she has formed an excellent foreign corps long ago in the Mediterranean; a Hessian corps in America; an admirable Hanoverian legion during the late war. But circumstances too often prevent her relying (as the Romans did) on the perfection of her military system so far as to dispense with native materials; except, indeed, in the East, where the Roman principle is carried out to the widest extent, needing only one-tenth of British by way of model and inspiration under circumstances of peculiar trial! In African stations also, in the West Indies and on the American continent (as in Honduras), England proceeds (though insufficiently) upon this fine Roman principle, making her theory, her discipline, and the network of her rules do the work of her own too costly hands. She, like Rome, finds the benefit of her fine system chiefly in the dispensation which it facilitates from working with any exhaustible fund of means. Excellent must be that workmanship which can afford to be careless about its materials; yet still–where naturally and essentially it must be said that materiem superabat opus, because one section of our martial service moves by nautical soldiers, and with respect to the other half because it is necessary to meet European troops by men of British blood–we cannot, for European purposes, look to any other districts than our own native officinae of population. The Life Guards (1st regiment) and the Blues (2nd) recruit chiefly, or did so thirty years ago, in Yorkshire. This is a manufacturing county, though in a mode of manufacturing which escapes many evils of the factory system. And generally we are little disposed pedantically to disparage towns as funds of a good soldiery. Men of mighty bone and thews, sons of Anak, to our own certain knowledge, arise in Kendal, Wakefield, Bradford and Leeds; huge men, by thousands, amongst the spinners and weavers of Glasgow, Paisley, etc., well able to fight their way through battalions of clod-hoppers whose talk is of oxen. But, unless in times subject to special distress, it is not so easy to tempt away the weaver from his loom as the delver from his spade. We believe the reason to be, that the monotony of a rustic life is more oppressive to those who have limited resources than the corresponding monotony of a town life. For this reason, and for many others, it is certain–and perhaps (unless we get to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through centuries–that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies, England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish Lowlands, of those elegantly-formed men who are found in Devonshire, Cornwall, etc., of those hardy men (a feature in human physics still more important) who are found in every district–if many are now resident in towns, most of them originated in rustic life; and from rustic life it is that the reservoir of towns is permanently fed. Rome was, England never will be, independent of her rural population. Rome never had a yeomanry, Rome never had a race of country gentlemen; England has both upon a scale so truly noble that it will be the simplest expression of that nobility to say, pointing to our villages, ‘Behold the cradle of our army!’ as inversely to say, pointing to that army: ‘Behold the manhood of our villages!’ As regards Rome, from the bisection of the Roman territory into two several corn districts depending upon a separate agriculture, it results that her wealth could not be defeated and transferred; secondly, it results from the total subjection of Egypt, that no embargo could be laid on the harvests of the Nile, and no famine could be organized against Rome; thirdly, it results that the Roman military system was thus not liable to be affected by any dependency upon foreign grain. On the argument that this dependency had always been proceeding gradually in Italy, so as virtually to reimburse itself by vicarious culture, whereas in England the transition from independency to dependency, being accomplished (if at all) in one day by Act of Parliament, would be ruinously abrupt; and also on the argument B, that Rome, if slowly losing any recruiting districts at home, found compensatory districts all round the Mediterranean, whilst England could find no such compensatory districts–we deny that the circumstances of the Roman corn trade have ever been stated truly; and we expect the thanks of our readers for drawing their attention to this outline of the points which essentially differenced it from the modern corn trade of England. England must, but Rome could not, reap from a foreign corn dependency: firstly, ruinous disturbance to the natural expansions of her wealth; secondly, famine by intervals for her vast population; thirdly, impoverishment to her recruiting service. These are the dreadful evils (some uniform, some contingent) which England would inherit of her native agriculture, but which Rome escaped under that partial transfer, never really accomplished. Meantime, let the reader remember that it is Rome, and not England–Rome historically, not England politically–which forms the object of our exposure. England is but the means of the illustration.