FOR PEACE AXD WAR. 5 



large cavalry aid ! Should that day come before our long 

 censurable apathy as to the efforts to prepare for it will 

 have admitted of preparation, where are we ! With Euro- 

 pean ports shut, our horse-breeding colonies too far removed 

 to aid us in horse supply at an exigent mom.ent, and, with 

 our internal resources in that way admittedly inadequate, 

 after the most minute investigation on the subject ; may 

 not every Englishman ask, with a laudable anxiety, what 

 is to become of our cavalry and artillery? Cannons, 

 ammunition, and war material that can be made, manu- 

 factured, or subsidized, will, doubtless, be forthcoming at 

 the hour of sore need ; but let us, as a rational people, 

 remember that we cannot put our looms, foundries, and 

 steam-power to " turn us out " horses ; nor are they by 

 any means a portable merchandise, if even opportunity of 

 purchase from any source offered. It takes five years, at 

 least, to mount a dragoon with any reasonable hope of even 

 an approximate amount of that training and endurance 

 essential to a cavalry charger to meet with efficiency the 

 duties devolving to his share through the evolutions and 

 hardships of modern warfare. And five years must only 

 be expected to put us in possession of immature " re- 

 mounts," by no means reliable under the trying ordeals of 

 a protracted campaign. With such unanswerable difficulties 

 staring the country in the face, how, in the name of the 

 very commonest common sense, is it that if we have no 

 better plan of operations to pursue we do not follow that 

 which has in other states been found to work with practical 

 success 1 The Government interposition has been a success 

 upon the Continent ; with greater indigenous advantages, 

 why should it not be, at least, equally beneficial to us now 

 in our extremity ? Let us not shirk the palpable induction, 

 it is DO longer a question of principle, but of coin ! ! 



The following notice of operations of that great cavalry 



