See the scathing inscription on the memorial in St. Jordan's, and Chesney's ...

See the scathing inscription on the memorial in St.

Jordan's, and Chesney's Battle of Dorking. He had already to his record one of the useful codifications of the age, the Merchant Shipping Act of 18541 and the draught, at least, of one of its most memorable Statutes, the British

North America Act of 1867. Behind the

convenient clamour over the abolition of Purchase, he worked steadily at the unification of the Line, Militia, and Volunteers, at the equipment and training of the Army for the new scientific warfare, the improvement of material, the formation of a Reserve.

So steadily and so well, indeed, that England, which, when the Germans were before Paris was inclined to wonder whether she had an army at all, was, a few months later,

when the Germans were back

in Germany, ruefully considering the cost of an efficient one.

To abolish Purchase the debt was increased by £17,000,000: to add 20,000 men to the Army and modernize its equipment the tax-payer had to find £13,000,000 in a year: a price well worth paying for the removal of those uneasy, fitful alarms which had been before, and were to be again, the parents of bad counsel and improvident administration.' The Army, as Cardwell left it, was a good machine: and it was not his fault if his successors, and the Duke of Cambridge, and public opinion always more and more concerned with naval defence, let the machine run down. An island power needs an army as a defence against casual raiders, and as an expeditionary force.

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