comparative barbarism that ruined the Turk, for the conquerors of Constantinople compared as well for civilisation with the degenerate race they overthrew as the Poles and Russians, who have inflicted the severest losses upon them, compare with the Turks. The truth surely is, that we may extend Bacon's axiom, by saying, that if the nation which cultivates war absorbingly is bound to achieve great success, it is bound also to do it at the cost, within measurable time, of its place among the nations of the world.
It may be argued that all the instances quoted are those in which the immediate agent of dissolution has been defeat in war. It is easy to imagine the inferior races increasing more rapidly than they do upon the higher, but difficult to suppose that they will ever be in such numbers as to crush superior skill and energy by brute weight. It is not, however, the purpose of this argument to assume that Europe is ever likely to be overrun by the Chinese, or North America subject to insurgent negroes. Each century has its own way of doing its appropriate work, and though in the face of Europe under arms it may seem perilous to count upon any dying out of the military spirit, every year seems to increase the pre-eminence of industrial over essentially martial nations.[1] The Chinese would be
- ↑ Even as regards the size of armies, it would be a mistake to suppose that the armies now maintained in time of peace are much larger than was the case anciently. Prussia, in 1740, had an army of 83,468 men to a population of 2,240,000. This is larger in proportion than the Prussian army on the war footing now is. Russia, with a population estimated at 12,000,000, had a peace establishment of 92,000 regulars and about 80,000 irregulars. It has now a population of 107,000,000, and a peace establishment of 841,000. France, in consequence of Fleury's pacific policy, had the smallest army proportionally of any great power at that time only—130,000 regulars and 36,000 militia, to a population a little under 20,000,000. But the peace establishment in the last years of Louis XIV. had been 360,000 men to a smaller popula-
