On this page

• Text (3)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    THE MILITIA . A militia should be essentially a national force , never employed out of the country , except in cases of very great emergency—those severe trials which every people , at certain periods ot their history , must inevitably undergo ; periods when they are beset by foes , or when , in conscquenco of negligence , they havo suffered the military machino to break down . If we Imd taken those steps , indicated in a recent number , as the " Basis of an Army ; " if wo had established those habits and institutions , that , by developing i :

    their faculties , make men good soldiers , wo should not be greatly troubled to form a militia . As every man would bo trained to arms from his youth up , volunteers for an embodied militia , independently of the voluntary companies , would never fall . At any moment the country could command , not a ' mob , but an army , to defend itself against invasion , numbering hundreds of thousands ; an army which could use the spado as effectually as the ride , so that with our wooden walls , and our wall of men , wo should really need " no more bulwarks , no towers along the steep /' i i 1 i : < i i : i

    for a military , but improve them for a civil life . To carry but this plan , camps and barracks would be needed , each with its schools and pro fessors . Under the present system , we catch up a yonng fellow , thrust him into a red coat , make him submit to manual drill , and dismiss him from the parade to the public house , a prey to idleness and debauchery . Under an improved and proper system , we should consider every man who entered the corps as , for the time of his service , under the immediate guardianship of the national authorities . We should teach him -to handle the pen as well as the musket ; to use his brains as ivell as his limbs ; to cultivate his affection , and control his passions . We should set before him , pedantically , but naturally , the highest examples . We should make him a diligent student of " common things , " teach him to cook , to saAV , to build , to drain , and to cultivate the earth . We should practically educate him in obedience , frugality , self-reliance , and selfrenunciation ; so that service in the militia might really serve many of the purposes , and , in some respects , more than the purposes , of superior schools . For in the camp-school the great object should be not accomplishments , not unnecessary acquirements , but strictly training ; and the greatest attention should be paid to the growth and ripening of the germs of moral excellenceto character , in short , and to the fullest development of physical vigour . To make a good soldier as well as to make a good citizen , a man must have strength and self-respect ; and if our youth could be imbued with selt-xespect , depend upon it , drunkenness , lewduess , personal uucleanness , filth of all kinds would be the exception and not the rule . Thus trained and educated , the young militiaman would , when his term of sorvice exp ired , enter civil society with tripled faculties , and a firm manly character . Instead of being a burden , he would be a benefit to society , and carry with him everywhere the habits acquired during his military training ; whereas , if he preferred military life , and entered the regular army , ho would take to that service the germs of all the attributes that characterize an old soldier . Surely it would not be very difficult to approximate to some system similar to that roughly sketched above , and to blot out our present no-system , which , although it improves the men in many cases , injures them in others , and neither converts them into good soldiers nor prevents them from being bad citizens . Do our readers need authority in suppor t ot these views ? If so , let them take to heart tho lecture delivered by Sir John M'NeiJl at Edinburgh last week , which came so ctpropos . . Let them study that lecture and see how deoply it cuts down to tho roots of our recent disasters , and lays bare their origin , in the division of labour , tho bad training of the poor in their homo and the school , the imperfect training of our soldiers even , whom a Government has under its hands . Depend upon it , if wo would kee £ Our place as a nation , and do its high dutlefr , Ve must govern mo ve diligently , and work nipre assiduously to elevate from tilth , intemperance , and self-debasement , those who form the . bwif of society .

    A militia , raised as we propose , with a partial training as a basis , might be made into a force , only loss formidable than the regular army , for war purposes , and eminently beneficial to tho country in time of peace . Taken young , entry into tho militia corps , should be , in fact , only an entry into a higher school , whero tho peer and tho peasant might undergo a training in common for a given period , which , would not only fit them i < < i < i I

    Untitled Article

    A WORD TO SHEFFIELD . Some of the middle and working- '*» S «« Sheffield hesitate whether or not to I'dUiynlko " revelations" they havo liourd «¦ . ojcujug Lord Palmekston and EwgJ' « l » lurc - jp ° , W ; To the majority of intelligent 1 >(> .-oue ,-jW * only in Sheffield , but in J * " ™ ' ^ ^ n ? , OTTT castle , and other North ™ * # ^ * fim * lms long been obvious that it "' VtataW !* 1 ud boo , ? truo , it would havo boon ' ^ MOT * bv the ovidonco which its uuthors n ^? fyjH $ »• forthcoming , but which never coaMgy . ^ tyflpMfc

    Untitled Article

    this century , geologists now living were condemned as uttering opinions " at variance with the narrative of holy writ . " " Is every man , " asked Lord Jchn , " has made a physical discovery , to ask every magistrate whether his demonstration is at variance with some ignorant interpretation of the Scriptures , before he ventures to publish it to the world V Lord John vindicates the right of freely discussing all sub jects , in religion as well as science , by the examples of the disciples who refused to obey the dictate of the magistrate that they should be silent . He showed how the attempt to repress intellectual or scientific progress has not succeeded in establishing the old opinion , but only in causing its overthrow through a violent ¦ convulsion . But Lord John did not stop at this comparatively low position ; he asserted that " the first step to the discovery of truth is the exercise of the faculties of the human mind . " He was not content with asserting the right of truth to its own free utterance , but he insisted upon * ' the free circulation of truth and error . " This , even at the present day , is a really courageous position -, not the less courageous for being strictly logical and confirmed in its wisdom by experience . Lord John might have immensely increased his authorities . There is no truth , however early uttered in the history of mankind , that has not been strengthened by subsequent discoveries . The square of the hypothenuse is equal to the square of the two sides as much in our ovtm day as it was in the days of Thai . es . The two new commandments that men should love God with all their hearts , and that they should love one another , have continued to gain in force and in the practical obedience of mankind , exactly in proportion as they have been discussed with freedom by large numbers , and not simply uttered dogmatically by priests in uniform . On the other hand , dogmatic errors which were invulnerable while discussion was forbidden , have fallen beneath argument as soon as discussion was free . That sceptical philosopher Lucretius was not put in his right place by the dogmatism of Rome in his day , or even of Koine in ours , but by that free discussion of facts which has shown the insufficiency of his knowledge . Tom Paine has ceased to be an opponent worth remembering , now that his little book must no longer be read in secret . Nay , Paley has ceased to lend his aid to scepticism , now that free discussion has admitted higher minds , and the orthodox have learned from their opponents to raise the discussion above the low grounds on which he placed it . Tho most bigoted now admit that the great truths of the Creation are not to be comprehended and settled like questions of watch-making . It is free discussion , in truth , that has given finite reason its fling , and shown it that it cannot compass tho cr . eation or measure the truth of all things . Lord John , therefore , might havo told the whole story of dogmatic scepticism as a corroboration of his leading principle . In all this there is nothing now to the Leader . The distinctive principle with which wo started was the right ot every opinion to its own free utterance . Wo contended equally with Lord John , that free discussion would bo in the interest of truth . And not only of truth , but of some- thing which belongs to truth , though not part of it . We have always held and maintained that freedom of discussion would conduce to respect- ful consideration for tho vanishing opinions of tiio past . Human powers are incapable of complete knowledge , or of any absolute knowledge excopt in the divinely-inspired form of instinct , which is independent of reason ; but the freer disoussion is , the more conscious we are of thin common im - perfection , and new opinion , knowing that it mast die , has the stronger sympathy for old dogma on its death bod , knowing that old dogma was tho bow opinion of a former day .

    . , > f r i ¦ ! It was persecution that made new opinion contraband , that forced upon it all its lawlessness , upon its votaries all their bitterness . For no custom-house was so easily evaded as that of dogma . The Inquisition itself could not prevent the converse of thought , but could only identify the belief in mathematically-demonstrated truths with revolution ; rendering , for instance , every astronomer who believed that two and two make four ipso facto an enemy to constituted authority . Lord John perceives , not only that Governments ' and hierarchies , but even Young Men ' s Christian Associations , must beware how they place themselves in direct antagonism to any rule that two and two make four . The prohibitions on discussion were evaded ; evasion is always immoral ; and in this sense , the evasions borrowed their worst vice from the bad government they counteracted . The master of satire related in plain language the facts recorded in the most Sacred Volumes and converted them to ridicule by bringing them in juxtaposition with homely notions of modern discoveries ; but he cast ridicule on the truth that came down to us with rude cosmogonies . So again , after exposing the base attributes ascribed to divinity by dogmatic perpetuations of obsolete forms , and making us logically understand that the old mythologists had not given us logical proof of tJteir God , the sceptic ventured upon the mad assertion , " There is no God . " Scepticism itself , exasperated by the scourge of persecution , went beyond the utmost extravagance of religious dogma , and took its suicidal stand upon an assertion of the negative ! Outrages of that kind are rendered impossible by free discussion . In our day , the sceptics , not to use a more offensive term , are represented by the calm and conscientious Secularists , who simply confess their own vocation for dealing with temporal affairs rather than eternal inquiries , while they combat the remnant < of social persecution which is carried on in the ^ name of " religion . " And in our day , the leader * of the Whig party , accepting an invitation from Lord Shaftesbury and the Young Men ' s Chris- 1 tian Association , stands up in Exeter Hall to ' proclaim in the interest of the prevalent faith , ' with much historical corroboration—the funda- ' mental principle of " T / ce Leader . " .

    Untitled Article

    ¦ jtt ^ ... iV . Wg . i ¦ . g-BJ 8 ^ - U 05

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 17, 1855, page 1105, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2115/page/13/