mere fatuity to have taken to his arms again a faithless wife, or whether, bearing in mind her love for him, the temptation and arts to which she had been exposed, her confession and repentance, he would not have acted the part of a christian man, to have restored to her place the mother of his children. Lord Cloncurry, acting still by the advice of his friends, determined to punish the paramour by the only means of reaching so heartless a ruffian-through that fortune which he had made use of for the purpose of gratifying his wretched passions. An action was accordingly brought, and damages, perhaps the largest ever given by a jury, were assessed at £20,000. Time, which effects such mighty changes, healed the wounds inflicted on Lord Cloncurry's heart. A divorce had been obtained shortly after the trial, and the marriage dissolved by an act of Parliament. Lady Cloncurry returned to England, where she continued afterwards to reside, under her maiden name, (Miss Morgan,) until, by the death of an uncle, she received a considerable addition to her fortune, soon after which, she mar ried a clergyman of the Established Church. His lordship espoused in second marriage, a widow, Mrs. Emily Leeson, mother of the present Earl of Miltown, by whom he had issue the present Lord Cloncurry, and a large family, Valentine, his eldest son, (being by his first wife,) having died in 1825. The long and useful after career of Lord Cloncurry, devoid though it may be of that interest attaching to the stormy period of his early life, is well worthy of perusal. The business of his existence seemed to be, to support every government and every ruler disposed to act honestly and fairly by this country; to unite men of every sect who loved Ireland; to soften the acerbities of religious and political party spirit; to ameli. orate the condition of the people; to educate the rising genera ation; to protect the poor man; to administer the duties of the magistrate, the peasant's judge, with conscientious impartiality; to relieve want and misery; to screen the weak from oppression and bring the offending to justice. His charity was munificent as it was unostentatious. He used his rank and his wealth, not for the purposes of display, not as a means of obtain ing and wielding power and patronage, not for self-aggrandizement, but as one to whom they had been entrusted as a steward to shield the lowly and relieve the poverty-stricken. His contributions to public charities were private, and they were generally conveyed with an intimation that the name of

the donor was not to be made public.

No tale of woe reached his ears that he did not unsolicited hasten to relieve.

Though we have written his political life terminated early, we were hardly correct in the statement; certainly his public life did not. His attention, however, was rather devoted to social reforms than to national questions; but to enter on these details, which would occupy an immense space, is beyond our purpose, the reader will find the history ably, zealously, and honestly recorded by Mr. Fitzpatrick.

After an illness of a few days Lord Cloncurry expired on the 28th of October, 1853. Full of years and honours he passed away to render an account of his stewardship, and reap the rewards of his good deeds. Happy would it be for the country if we possessed many like him, and none who knew him or read the narrative of his life, but will feel the correctness of the sculptor's taste, when he placed the figure of Hibernia beside the bust of Cloncurry, resting an arm on his shoulder, as would a mother in embracing a dutiful and loving child, conscious of his affection and proud of his protecting manhood. Let those to whom God has given wealth and power study the Life of Cloncurry and follow his example, if they desire, when the last debt is to be paid, to sink into an honored grave, confiding in their own rectitude when about to stand before the Eternal Judge, with the regrets of good men and the tears of a nation, bequeathing to their family the proud inheritance of a revered name.

L

ART. VII. THE MILITIA AND THE LINE.

1. Acts 15th and 16th Victoria, Chapter 50: 17th Victoria, Chapters, 13, 16, 107, and others being the Acts of Parliament, Regulating the present Militia Establishment of the United Kingdoms.

2. War Office Circulars of March, 1855. Being those Relating to The Militia.

of war.

Startling and terrible as have been the incidents of the Crimean Expedition, they have as yet but barely awakened the English public mind to the fact that we are in a state The long, long peace-the many instances in which the gathering of storm clouds in the political atmosphere dissipated and passed away without explosion-the huge self-contentment which England's commercial prosperity, and the adulation it won for her, from foreign visitants and writers, had tended to foster and augment-all have contributed to lull her people into a false security, and to render it difficult for them fully to realize even now the fact, that their triumphs of peace are interrupted, and that hard blows, and stern and bloody, and widewasting contention in arms are displacing, and replacing, the pacific strivings and gainful and accumulating enterprizes of trade.

When this has been and is the case-as any one with the most ordinary opportunities of knowing the English mind will at once admit it to be-there is no longer much room to wonder at the defects and blunders so notoriously and lamentably manifested in our military arrangements. It was but natural that a state of things so entirely unexpected and undreamt of, should not have been prepared for; and that on the contrary, even the ordinary military establishment of the country should have become the object of cavil and attack, by reason of its apparent want of necessity and indisputable expense.

We shall not stop here to enquire and determine to what degree that kind of dilettante republicanism, so often noticeable in the sayings and doing of the potential middle classes of England has contributed to stimulate the attacks in question, and to render them, partially indeed, but still only too

extensively successful. As it would not altogether be very consistent with the reforming professions and reclamations of these classes, to seek to lay hold for their own use and benefit of the patronage afforded by military expenditure, the next best thing in their opinion, was to deprive the aristocracy of it; and to this object then every effort has been sedulously and constantly directed. The platitudes about the unconstitutionality of a standing army-the more plausible, and to a certain extent reasonable, diatribes against the system of promotion as existing; the furbishing up, and where thought required, the exaggerating of every case of alleged, or proved misconduct of military authorities-these and other such auxiliary means have been industriously and perseveringly employed; and the result of the whole has been, that res. trictions and reductions have from time to time been carried in Parliament, which have undeniably and with deplorable effectiveness, operated to diminish the efficiency of our army, and thereby not very indirectly to occasion much of the heavy disasters we have had to lament.

There were many warnings of this. Experienced Officers, in and out of Parliament, frequently labored to impress upon the public mind the danger of so ill-advised an economy; and foretold, what has been unhappily proved in the most overwhelming manner by the events of the last twelve months, that the comparatively paltry savings and clippings of the thirty or forty years of peace would be found not only to have a most injurious and crippling effect on our first efforts in next war, but would then necessitate a new and immediate expenditure, far out balancing in money amount, to say nothing of other considerations, the aggregate of the long series of reductions.

our

The Duke of Wellington, on more than one occasion, urgently remonstrated in his place in the House of Lords, against the general impolicy of these progressive reductions, and forcibly pointed out the particular hardships they inflicted upon the army; in depriving it of adequate reliefs in the tour of colonial duty, and altogether so weakening it, that to use his own strong expression, England had altogether no more men in arms thau barely sufficed to supply the sentries on post throughout her wide dominions.

All idea of a reserve force was long abandoned and forgotten. It really seemed as if the ruling powers of the British Empire

expected and believed that either the peace of Europe, or the lives and vigor of their existing number of soldiers would be perpetual. Even the occasional "little wars" in Indian or Caffre territory no further disturbed their quietism than to cause a few scanty additions to be made to the battalions actually employed at the scene of conflict; and where the casualties of service did not suffice ere the end of these "little wars," to nullify the additions. so made, a positive reduction to the previous statu quo was sure to follow..

When such was the manner in which the regular army was treated, the most uninformed person in military affairs will readily have surmised that the old constitutional force of the country, the militia, were very early put out of question altogether: such was the haste with which its services were sought to be dispensed with, that some regiments were disembodied and disbanded, almost before Napoleon Buonaparte had reached the scene of his first exile, the Island of Elba, in the year 1814. But no partial concession upon this point was of avail to stay the hasty hands of the economists.or constitutionalists, as they assumed to be, of the day; and accordingly, the winter of 1814-1815 was marked by several efforts on their part to compel the then government to get rid of the militia at once. The celebrated Sir Samuel Romilly capped the climax of these efforts on the 28th of February, 1815, scarcely more than a month before it was announced to the same House of Commons that the dogs of war were let slip again, on the escape of Napoleon from Elba and his landing in France. Sir Samuel's motion was as follows:

"That nine months having now elapsed since the definitive treaty of peace with France was signed; and this country having during the whole of that period been at peace not only with France, but with every power in Europe; and no cause whatever having existed or existing now, for apprehending invasion by a foreign enemy, or any insurrection or rebellion within the realm, it is contrary to the spirit and true intent and meaning of the Act of 42 Geo. 3, c. 90, to continue any part of the militia force of this country, still embodied."*

The arguments with which he supported his motion may be thus summarily stated. First, the absence of Foreign War, (that with the United States being considered on the eve of settlement) and similar absence of domestic disturbances or var Thom. 1095. Hansard, Vol. 29, P. 1815