History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 11 [55]
such the fatality of it:--begun, carried on, ended, as if by a
People in a state of somnambulism! More confused operation never
was. A solid placid People, heavily asleep (and snoring much,
shall we say, and inarticulately grunting and struggling under
indigestions, Constitutional and other? Do but listen to the hum
of those extinct Pamphlets and Parliamentary Oratories of
theirs!),--yet an honestly intending People; and keenly alive to
any commandment from Heaven, that could pierce through the thick
skin of them into their big obstinate heart. Such a commandment,
then and there, was that monition about Jenkins's Ear. Upon which,
so pungent was it to them, they started violently out of bed, into
painful sleep-walking; and went, for twenty years and more,
clambering and sprawling about, far and wide, on the giddy edge of
precipices, over house-tops and frightful cornices and parapets;
in a dim fulfilment of the said Heaven's command. I reckon that
this War, though there were intervals, Treaties of Peace more than
one, and the War had various names,--did not end till 1763.
And then, by degrees, the poor English Nation found that (at, say,
a thousand times the necessary expense, and with imminent peril to
its poor head, and all the bones of its body) it had actually
succeeded,--by dreadful exertions in its sleep! This will be more
apparent by and by; and may be a kind of comfort to the sad
English reader, drearily surveying such somnambulisms on the part
of his poor ancestors."
2. TWO DIFFICULTIES.--"There are Two grand Difficulties in this
Farce-Tragedy of a war; of which only one, and that not the worst
of the Pair, is in the least surmised by the English hitherto.
Difficulty First, which is even worse than the other, and will
surprisingly attend the English in all their Wars now coming, is:
That their fighting-apparatus, though made of excellent material,
cannot fight,--being in disorganic condition; one branch of it,
especially the 'Military' one as they are pleased to call it,
being as good as totally chaotic, and this in a quiet habitual
manner, this long while back. With the Naval branch it is
otherwise; which also is habitual there. The English almost as if
by nature can sail, and fight, in ships; cannot well help doing
it. Sailors innumerable are bred to them; they are planted in the
Ocean, opulent stormy Neptune clipping them in all his moods
forever: and then by nature, being a dumb, much-enduring, much-
reflecting, stout, veracious and valiant kind of People, they
shine in that way of life, which specially requires such.
Without much forethought, they have sailors innumerable, and of
the best quality. The English have among them also, strange as it
may seem to the cursory observer, a great gift of organizing;
witness their Arkwrights and others: and this gift they may often,
in matters Naval more than elsewhere, get the chance of
exercising. For a Ship's Crew, or even a Fleet, unlike a land
Army, is of itself a unity, its fortunes disjoined, dependent on
its own management; and it falls, moreover, as no land army can,
to the undivided guidance of one man,--who (by hypothesis, being
English) has now and then, from of old, chanced to be an
organizing man; and who is always much interested to know and
practise what has been well organized. For you are in contact with
verities, to an unexampled degree, when you get upon the Ocean,
with intent to sail on it, much more to fight on it;--bottomless
destruction raging beneath you and on all hands of you, if you
neglect, for any reason, the methods of keeping it down, and
making it float you to your aim!
The English Navy is in tolerable order at that period. But as to
the English Army,--we may say it is, in a wrong sense, the wonder
of the world, and continues so throughout the whole of this
History and farther! Never before, among the rational sons of
Adam, were Armies sent out on such terms,--namely without a
General, or with no General understanding the least of his
business. The English have a notion