But the feelings which I described to you as prevalent in France and in
Germany, arose not from your want of an army of 500,000 men. They were
excited by these two facts.
First, by what was supposed (perhaps falsely) to be the bad military
administration of your only army. Secondly, and much more, by your
apparent inability to raise another army.
According to continental notions, a nation which cannot raise as many
troops as its wants require, loses our respect. It ceases, according to
our notions, to be great or even to be patriotic. And I must confess
that, considering how difficult it is to procure soldiers by voluntary
enlistment, and how easily every nation can obtain them by other means, I
do not see how you will be able to hold your high rank, unless your
people will consent to something resembling a conscription.
Dangerous as it is to speak of a foreign country, I venture to say that
England is mistaken if she thinks that she can continue separated from
the rest of the world, and preserve all her peculiar institutions
uninfluenced by those which prevail over the whole of the Continent.
In the period in which we live, and, still more, in the period which is
approaching, no European nation can long remain absolutely dissimilar to
all the others.
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