278 Epidemics. 



Observe our enormous armaments our Crimean, Franco- 

 Austrian and Franco-Prussian wars, the American Federal 

 and Confederate war, and the Brazilian war ; how, in 

 every instance, the numbers engaged, as compared with like 

 territories, for equal chances of loss and gain, in former 

 times, are truly frightful, and the expenditure, for the luxury 

 indulged, is wholesale ; yet, strange to say, with an off-set 

 on one side or the other of economy and benefit ! 



Talk of the Teutons and Cimbri in old Marius's time, who 

 cut them up by the thousands upon thousands ; and of the 

 armies of Xerxes, against whom 300 Greeks made an 

 abiding and depressing impression upon the half rabble and 

 ill-disciplined troops of an Asiatic despot ; what are these 

 compared with the well-accoutred, disciplined, and carefully- 

 provisioned troops of a minor European state of the present 

 day ? Why, they would be but food for slaughter, and as 

 chaff before the wind for efficiency and destructiveness. 



Turn to our ramifying (and to their fellow workmen 

 arbitrary) trades unions ; societies for sickness, death, 

 and burial ; our insurance companies, scientific and social 

 sciences. Such, in all grades and ranks of society, is the 

 tendency to gather strength by association, that even gun 

 clubs for the destruction of sparrows have not been found 

 wanting in certain of our young adventurers in the field of 

 distinction and merit ; and, when great fields are occupied, 

 the tendency to association will extend itself to the honour- 

 able distinction of Fellow of the Black Beetle and Rat Club. 

 What may we infer from this widespread and open system 

 of association, as distinct from guilds and secret societies 

 common in the Middle Ages ? and for their very existence 

 and maintenance each and all are debtors to the Press for 

 publicity. 



Without begging the question too far, if safety to society 

 is the great enigma to be solved, its natural and true escape. 



