ENGLAND IN 1925.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 850, 15 August 1871, Page 3

ENGLAND IN 1925.

Everybody at home is talking about the firat paper in " Blackwood " for the month of May, and everybody is quite right. We do not know that we ever saw anything better in any magazine, or any better example of the vraisemblance which a skilled artist can produce by a variety of minute touches. If the writer is, as reported, Colonel Hamley, then Colonel Hamley, when he wrote the charming story of"Lady Lee's Widowhood," misconceived, as a novelist, the nature of his own powers. He should rival Defoe, not Anthony Trollope. The writer of this paper, living about 1925, gives his son an account of his adventures as a Volunteer during the invasion of England fifty years before, and so ia the narrative, so intensely real the impression it produces, that the coolest disbeliever in panics cannot read it without a flush of annoyance, or close it without the thought that, after all,. as the world Bow stands, some such day of humiliation for England is at least possible. Tire •suggested condition precedent of invasion, the destruction of the fleet by torpedoes attached by a new invention to our ships, has attracted ttany minds, and with the destruction of the regulars, the helplessness of the brave and half-organised Volunteers, and the absence of arrangement, ?ake up a picture which, fanciful as it | we seem as we read it almost to «ve seen. It describes so exactly shat we all feel that, under the circumstances, Englishmen, .if refused pe to organize, would probably do. His impossible to make extracts such M would give an idea of the paper, «>i its effect depends upon a thousand ttmute touches, which would be unintelligible without the context, but we just give the*writer*s account of the destruction of the fleet. The German Government has found means of transport by laying an ,embargo on every jewel m the northern ports of Europe; to| England, though unready, had ™ll a fleet which, visited by the s^ 0 * and calmly complimented by jne Times," steamed out to destroy fie advancing armada. A cable was *** down as it advanced -. ; . A ***& just come up to town by ™n *a usual, and was walking to my "woe, when' the newsboys began to d^ti < >^ ew e<^tion —enemy's fleet in in t i You maY im agiae the scene "> London I Business still went on

at the banks for bills matured, although the independence of the country was being fought out under our very eyes, so to say ; and the speculators were active enough. But even with the people who were making and losing their fortunes, the interest in the fleet overcame everything else; men who went to pay in or draw out their money stopped to show the last bulletin to the cashier. As for the street, you could hardly get along for the crowd stopping to buy and read the newspapers ; while at every house or office the members sat restlessly in the common room, as if to keep together for company, sending out some one of their number every few minutes to get the last edition. At least this is what happened at our office; but to sit still was as impossible as to do anything, and most of us went out and wandered about among the crowd under a sort of feeling that the news was got at quicker in this way. Bad as were the times coming, I think the sickening sensation of that day and the shock which Followed, were almost the worst that we underwent. It.'was about ten o'clock that the first telegram came ; an hour later announced that the admiral had signalled to form line of battle, and shortly afterwards that the order was given to bear down on the enemy and engage. At twelve came the announcement— * Fleet opened fire about three milea to leeward of us,' —that is, the ship with the cable. So far all had been expectancy, then came the first token of calamity. •An ironclad had been blown up—the enemy's torpedoes are doing great damage—the flagship is laid aboard the enemy—the flagship appears to be sinking—the vice-ad-miral has signalled'—there the cable became silent, and, as you know, we heard no more till two days afterwards. The solitary ironclad which escaped the disaster steamed into Portsmouth. Then the whole story came out*—how our sailors, gallant as ever, had tried to close with the enemy, how the latter had evaded the conflict at close quarters, and, sheering off, left behind the fatal engines which sent our shipß, one after the other, to the bottom; how all this happened almost ir. a few minutes. The Government, it appears, had received warnings of this invention; but to the nation this stunning blow was utterly unexpected." The scene will happen some day, though the means of destruction will probably be the fall of barrels of nitro-glycerine, or some similar compound, thrown from catapults on the decks of our ironclads, and exploding downwards—so as to avoid all danger to the assailants — : and we can only hope that the second line of defence may then be in better order. If it is not, the rest of the picture may yet be realised:—

"We had heard of generosity in war; we found none; the war was made by us, it was said, and we must take the consequences. London and our only arsenal captured, we were at the merty of onr captors, and right heavily did they tread on our necks. Need I tell you the rest ?—of the ransom we had to pay, and the taxes raised to cover it, which keep us paupers to this day ?—the brutal frankness that announced we must give place to a new naval power and be made harmless for revenge ?—the victorious troops living at free Jquarters, the yoke they put on us made the more galling that their requisitions had a semblance of method and legality P Better have been robbed at first hand by the soldiery themselves, than through our own magistrates made the instruments for extortion. How we lived through the degradation we daily and hourly underwent, I hardly even now understand. And what was there left to us to live for ? Stripped of our colonies : Canada and the West Indies gone to America ; Australia forced to separate; India 1 st for ever, after the English there had all been destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from the aid of their countrymen; Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval Power; Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution. When I look at my country as it is now-r-its trade gone, its factories silent, its harbours empty, a prey to pauperism and decay—when I see all this, and think what Great Britain was in my youth, I ask myself whether I have really a heart or any sense of patriotism that I should have witnessed such degradation and still care to live."

It is said this paper is to be published separately. If its author will add one page explaining why a new army could not be raised in the North, and a second displaying the helplessness of a people like that of London without weapons or the habit of using them, and then sell his pamphlet in the fashion of Dame JEuropa's School, he will produce an effect of which he little dreams, perhaps do more to arm England than Mr Cardwell, with his sixteen millions, will be able to accomplish.

Men may have the most dazzling talents, but if they are scattered on many objects he will accomplish nothing. Strength is like gunpowder—to be effective it needs concentration and aim.

The Rev. F. Southgate, vicar of Northfleet, informed his congregation on Easter Day that' as " buttons', bad money, and other things not fit to mention," were put in the offertory bags, the collection would in future be made in open plates.