whatever is new ought simply because it is new to have a trial. Naturally, perhaps, the Conservative impulse is strongest in our military administration. In 1848 the Prussian needle-gun attracted so much attention in the campaign against Denmark, that a committee of officers was appointed to report upon it. They agreed that it was quite unnecessary to give up Brown Bess, and the change to a long-range rifle had accordingly to be made during the Crimean War.[1] "We hold our empire and preserve national existence on the condition of being stronger at sea than any other power, and yet France—a formidable rival and possible enemy—was allowed to outstrip us for a time in the construction of ironclads.[2]
Now, the Conservatism of an ancient society, which shrinks instinctively from change, because any change may lead to dangerous combinations, is most remarkable in England, because England has in many matters been the principle of ferment in the modern world. It has changed Catholicism for Protestantism, and tempered Protestantism with free thought; it has limited monarchy; it has given a peculiar meaning to aristocracy, making that elastic and flexible which is rigid everywhere else; it has associated the working classes with government; it has experimented in making labour free, and in freeing the exchange of labour from fetters; and it has popularised the feeling,
- ↑ My authority for this is an officer who was on the committee.
- ↑ In the summer of 1866 the English ironclad fleet consisted of 36 vessels, carrying 637 guns; the French ironclad fleet of 33 vessels, carrying 777 guns. Even if ships chiefly valuable for coast defence were deducted from these lists, the French still remained superior in guns by 613 to 526, though inferior in the number of sea-going ships by 17 to 27.—Statesman's Year-Book, 1886-87. "France undoubtedly was the first to construct sea-going ironclads, a policy we at first thought folly, and then were constrained to follow."—Eardley Wilmot: The Development of Navies, p. 249.
