National Life and Character 313 



Pearson here seems to have too much thought of 

 Europe only. In America and Australia there is 

 no danger of the upgrowing of great standing 

 armies: and, as he well shows, the fact that every 

 citizen must undergo military training, is by no 

 means a curse to the nations of Continental Europe. 

 There is one point, by the way, although a small 

 point, where it may be worth while to correct Mr. 

 Pearson's statement of a fact. In dwelling on what 

 is undoubtedly the truth, that raw militia are utterly 

 incompetent to make head against trained regular 

 forces, he finds it necessary to explain away the de- 

 feat at New Orleans. In doing this he repeats the 

 story as it has been told by British historians from 

 Sir Archibald Alison to Goldwin Smith. I hasten 

 to say that the misstatement is entirely natural on 

 Mr. Pearson's part; he was simply copying, with- 

 out sufficiently careful investigation, the legend 

 adopted by one side to take the sting out of defeat. 

 The way he puts it is that six thousand British under 

 Pakenham, without artillery, were hurled against 

 strong works defended by twice their numbers, and 

 were beaten, as they would have been had the works 

 been defended by almost any troops in the world. 

 In the first place, Pakenham did not have six thou- 

 sand men ; he had almost ten thousand. In the second 

 place, the Americans, instead of being twice as nu- 

 merous as the British, were but little more than half 

 as numerous. In the third place, so far from being 

 without artillery, the British were much superior 



to the Americans in this respect. Finally, they 

 14 VOL. I. 



