Douglas, Sir Charles Napier, Major-General William Napier, and Major-General Brown, the Deputy Adjutant-General, will easily, if required, make such a selection from standard works on strategy, castrametation, military history, and the science and art of war, as shall at least stimulate the curiosity of young men to search farther; and as the best works of the sort extant appear to be the productions of authors who write in French and in German, the officer's knowledge of these necessary languages will be advanced by the same processes which advance his acquaintance with the theory of his profession. Neither ought it to be a puzzle where we are to lay our hands upon competent regimental military instructors. There is attached to each corps in our army a functionary, who, under existing circumstances, seems to be as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach-we mean the second major. Make him your military instructor. Possibly you may find many second-majors in the service at this moment who possess neither the degree of knowledge, nor the habits of thought which would fit them for the undertaking. So much the worse for the British army. But inform them generally of your purpose-throw open to them the senior department at Sandhurst, and give to such as may prefer it, leave to study at Berlin, or any other continental military college; and at the end of two years the majority will return to their regiments, fully qualified for the duties which you have determined to impose upon them. Such as cannot manage this in two years are manifestly of a capacity so dull that they never ought to rise above their present rank in the service. Give them a broad hint that they had better retire; and you will find plenty of captains both able and willing to fill up the vacancies. Besides books, and a director of studies, there will be needed stations, here and there, to which, in the order of home reliefs, regiments shall be marched for the purpose of practising on the ground attached to the barracks the lessons which they have learned elsewhere. Here the soldiers may work at the construction and attack of fortified places-the officers directing, and the Military Instructor superintending the whole. Here sketches may be made of the surrounding country, and reports as to its military capabilities regularly sent in; while to complete the course, ten or twelve thousand men ought to be assembled every autumn in a camp of instruction, and manoeuvred, infantry, cavalry, and artillery together, for ten or twelve days at the least. We know that it is objected to arrangements of this sort, that the farmers and country gentlemen of England will oppose them; because there is risk of damage to the fences and plantations. Some shortsighted squires and farmers may have nourished such narrow notions notions a few years ago, but we cannot credit that, being aware of the revolutions which steam is every day working, any of these patriotic classes will hesitate in these days to incur occasional inconvenience and even a little damage, rather than that the troops of England shall lack the means of mastering the great principles of their art. Moreover, are not the royal forests open to us-Windsor, Epping, the New Forest-and may we not count on having access to many waste places in Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland? Give us the men, and the officers to command them, and the tents, and the baggage-waggons, and the ammunition, and the commissariat, and we will find you a score of fields of operation in each of the three great divisions of the empire. And what is more, we will undertake to say, that at the end of a few seasons the whole military character of the people will be changed, and the Duke will find among our officers considerably above the half-dozen of whom he, with considerable hesitation, admits that if you were to put 70,000 men into Hyde Park, possibly they might know how to get them out again. We are not so innocent as to anticipate that these suggestions shall escape censure. There is a vis inertiæ, a disinclination to change, inherent in most public men, which leads them to persevere in error often after it has been pointed out to them, and to defend the course which they find it convenient to take by very plausible arguments. In the present instance, for example, it will probably be said, that all these novelties are uncalled for; that the British army is, both in its discipline and in the materials of which it is composed, precisely what it ever was; and that having triumphed in the late war, it needs but an opportunity of putting forth its strength to triumph in another. To a certain extent we admit the justice of this reasoning. The materials of which the British army is composed are excellent, and so are the precision and steadiness of regiments under arms; but was not this equally the case in 1793? And yet what followed? We are so dazzled by the successes of the last six years in the war of the French Revolution, that we entirely overlook the fifteen of disaster and disgrace which preceded them. We are old enough to recollect the time when British commanders-(though nobody questioned their honour or gallantry, and, heaven knows, the pluck of their soldiers could never be doubted)—were considered the very worst in Europe; and we cannot say that there is anything in the annals of the campaigns of '94, '95, '96, and '99 which goes far to cleanse them of the stain. Moreover, neither Maida nor Egypt shook this general belief, at least to any good purpose; for the one was a rash and aimless under taking, taking, and the other brilliant rather because of the valour of the troops than the science or skill displayed by their leaders. Undoubtedly the days of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo were glorious days to the British arms. But who achieved these glories? Armies trained both to the theory and practice of war in the best of all schools, the field of action, and led on by one of those master-spirits which appear in the world only once in a century or two. But this master-spirit we cannot hope to find in trim for work during very many more years; nay, even now it may be doubted whether there is animal vigour enough left in that once iron frame to sustain the wear and tear of a tough campaign. And what are we to do when he is gone? In the history of past ages is it anywhere recorded that great nations have depended for their success in war, or their power to command peace, upon individuals? Doubtless giants arise from time to time, who over-ride all difficulties-work miracles, so to speak, and set the world in a blaze. Such were Nimrod, Sesostris, Cyrus, Alexander, Hannibal, long ago; such were Timour, Gengis Khan, Charles the Twelfth, Marlborough, and Frederick; and such, in our own day, were Napoleon and the Duke—of whom one happily still lives to command the reverence of a grateful country. But it was the military system of Rome, not the genius of Scipio or Cæsar, which secured for her throughout centuries the sceptre of the world; and the example is of eternal application-whether we look to states animated with a Roman ambition, or to those which merely desire to hold and keep an independent and honourable place in the community of nations. ART. VIII.-1. Memoir, Historical and Political, on the NorthWest Coast of America and the adjacent Territories. By Robert Greenhow, Translator and Librarian to the Department of State. Pp. 221. New York and London, 1840. 2. The History of Oregon and California, and the other Territories on the North-West Coast of North America; accompanied by a Geographical View and Map of those Countries, and a number of Documents as Proofs and Illustrations of the History. By Robert Greenhow. Pp. 482. London. 1844. 3. The Geography of Oregon and California, and the other Territories on the North-West Coast of North America; illustrated by a new and beautiful Map of those Countries. By Robert Greenhow, Translator and Librarian to the Department of VOL. LXXVII. NO. CLIV. 2 P State A History of Oregon State of the United States; Author of and California.' Pp. 42. New York. 4. Lecture on Oregon. By the Hon. C. Cushing, late Commissioner of the United States to China; at the Lyceum, Boston, November, 1845. Pp. 12. London. 5. The Oregon Question; or, a Statement of the British Claims to the Oregon Territory in Opposition to the Pretensions of_the United States of America. By Thomas Falconer, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, and Member of the Royal Geographical Society. Pp. 49. London, 1845. 6. The Oregon Question. North American Review, No. 130, for January, 1846. Oliver Broaden and Co., Boston. 7. The Oregon Territory: Claims thereto of England and America considered, its Condition and Prospects. By Alexander Simpson, Esq., a late British resident there. London, 1846. Pp. 60. S. The Oregon Question determined by the Rules of International Law. By Edward S. Wallace, Esq., Barrister-at-law. bay. Pp. 39. London, 1846. 9. The Oregon Question as it stands. By M. B. Sampson. Pp. 15. London, 1846. 10. The Oregon Question examined in respect to Facts and the Law of Nations. By Travers Twiss, D.C.L., F.R.S., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, and Advocate in Doctors' Commons. Pp. 391. Longman and Co., London, 1846. 11. The Oregon Territory; a Geographical and Physical Account of that Country and its Inhabitants, and with Outlines of its History and Discovery. By the Rev. C. G. Nicolay, of King's College, and Member of the Royal Geographical Society of London. 1846. THE PHE first impression, we believe, of any rational and tolerably impartial man, after wading through the protracted discussions and voluminous publications on what is called the Oregon Question, must be that of wonder at the wild chaos of contradictory facts and the tedious labyrinth of inconsistent arguments in which the claims of the United States have been enveloped, and of regret as well as surprise at finding so many statesmen of eminent ability and of the most respectable character exercising their misapplied ingenuity in support of so unreasonable a case. In fairness, however, to American statesmen, we must recollect that their situation is very peculiar. The political dependence in which their constitution places every public man, from the highest to the lowest, must have a tendency to render them habitually and implicitly subservient subservient to the impulses of popular opinion or popular caprice, which, in a more deliberative and freer form of government, it would be the office of men of their talents and station to control. Any citizen who aspires to serve his country in a public capacity must adopt as the main article of his creed, Vox populi vox Dei.' He can hardly venture with impunity to have an opinion of his own; and he that differs from his constituent power-be it President or People-falls into political annihilation. If it were not for this inexorable despotism of democracy, the Oregon question could never have grown to its present shape and size, nor could we have any apprehension that the peace of the world was in danger from a cause so obviously inadequate and a pretension so manifestly unjust. We do not say this by way of reproach, or in any irritating spirit; on the contrary, we mean it as an apology for not receiving with the confidence and treating with the respect due to their personal talents and characters, the opinions, and—what is perhaps a very different thing—the statements and arguments to which those gentlemen have allied themselves. We will even go a step further. We admit that the idea of peopling the whole continent-from the Isthmus to the Polar Sea-with the Anglo-American race, and uniting those vast countries into one great and homologous federation, is a magnificent idea, and one that excusably inflames the pride and patriotism of an American, even to the extent of obscuring his reason and blunting his sense of justice. We ourselves have contemplated as inevitable that glorious spread of the race and the language; and Mr. Coleridge, in the passage of his Table Talk' which Mr. Greenhow has chosen as the very significant motto of his book, said : The possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspere and Milton, is an august conception.'-Coleridge's Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 150. But neither Mr. Coleridge nor ourselves ever imagined the accomplishment of this august conception' after the fashion in favour of which Mr. Greenhow, with his usual ingenuity, quotes his authority; for Mr. Coleridge had said just before 'The more the Americans extend their borders into the Indians' lands the weaker will the national cohesion be. But I look upon the States as splendid masses to be used by and bye in the composition of two or three great governments.'-lb. p. 100. We, on our part, contemplated no other means than the legiti 2 P 2 mate |