72 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 



talions. If they are to be defended from an enemy, it must be by a 

 Fleet. They are always to be fought for by Sea, and the conqueror will 

 have the islands. 



On the continent we can do nothing in competition with the enormous 

 armies of France, Russia, and Austria on their own ground. The 

 Peninsula was a case entirely by itself ; and when we shall have such 

 a case again, we may raise such another army. We shall have time 

 enough to make our preparations, if we keep the mastery of the Sea ! 

 Yet let us hear. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, "in the motion 

 he was about to make, thought the best course he could pursue 

 was to state the supplies he intended to require, and then to set forth 

 the ways and means. The vote he required was, on account of the army 

 7,450,000, for the navy 5,594,000, for the ordnance 169,500, and 

 for the miscellaneous expenditure 1,930,000, making in the whole 

 16,950,000," out of nearly seventeen millions of money, an astounding 

 sum at any time ; and above all times, in the midst of peace, we have 

 here nearly eleven millions for the army ; for, almost the whole, under 

 the heads of ordnance, miscellaneous services, &c., goes to the army. 

 And this too, when ministers are declaring on all occasions the principle 

 of non-intervention ! The additional 10,000 men will cost upwards of 

 half a million a year, or the interest of about twelve millions sterling ! 

 And yet, for what conceivable purpose ? Is it fright at the rick-burners, 

 or at the speeches of Mr. O'Connell, or at a rebellion in the moon ? We 

 long to know the reason, deep as it may be in the cabinet bosom. 



The harangues and lectures of the itinerant teachers of law and liberty 

 are undoubtedly among the chief sources of the present desperate acts of 

 the peasantry. At the Sussex Assizes we have the thing declared in so 

 many words : 



" The first prisoner was Thomas Goodman, who was convicted for having 

 set fire to a barn belonging to Mr. Watts, at Battle, on the 3rd of December. 

 Within one month after this fire, no fewer than eight followed in rapid suc- 

 cession. The prisoner, on leaving the bar, confessed the justice of his senr 

 tence. He said that he set fire to the stack with a pipe and common matches. 

 He also acknowledged to being the incendiary who set fire to some corn stacks 

 a few days before, and for which a reward had been offered for the discovery 

 of the offender. He said he was so stirred up by the words of Cobbett that his 

 brain was nearly turned, and that he was under the impression that nothing 

 but the destruction of property by fire at night would effect that species of 

 revolution, the necessity of which was so strongly enforced l)y Mr. Cobbett in his 

 lecture delivered at Battle. The following are the words of the prisoner, with 

 reference to Cobbett, as taken down : e I, Thomas Goodman, never should af 

 thought of dotting aney sutch thing if Mr. Cobbet had never given aney lactures i 

 believe that their never would bean aney fires or mob in Battle nor maney other 

 places if he never had given aney lactures at all." 



Cobbett makes, what he thinks a reply to this charge, by saying that 

 the fires began before he lectured at Battle. He asserts, " that the fires 

 began in East Kent, where he had not been for years, and extended into 

 West Kent three months before he delivered his lectures in it; and that 

 he everywhere used his best endeavours to dissuade the people from 

 having recourse to violence." But the itinerant does himself serious in- 

 justice, if he thinks that he can do no mischief where he is not seen. 

 Do not his lectures spread through the country in all kinds of ways ? Is 

 not his Register propagated with effect through the counties ? Has he 

 not desperately denounced property ? We know his " love of order," 

 and honour it like his friend, the Irish agitator's. 



