"This is no great discovery," some one will say; "there have been volunteer rifle corps already. Of late days they started a thing of the kind among the peaceable Glasgow bodies, and those treasonable asses, the Irish. Irishmen that wanted to be rebels, and the English Chartists that wanted to sack London, recommended their deluded countrymen to 'club together and buy rifles.'" We acknowledge it--the idea is old enough. We only mean to say, that if a volunteer force be a desirable adjunct to our military system--and, under certain regulations, it might no doubt become so--then a rifle corps, or rather an army of volunteer riflemen, drawn from the classes specified above, would constitute a most effective branch of the service. We make no pretensions to the starting of a new idea; we merely endeavour to render that idea practicable, and to point out how it may be best realised. The following points as to organisation we lay down as indispensable, without which we should hardly care to see the force enrolled:-- 1st, The only matter in which the volunteer spirit should subsist, should be that of joining the corps in the first instance, and then of equipping and maintaining the men, each at their own cost. Once enrolled, it should no longer be at the option of the men whether they served or not--nor _when_, nor _where_, nor _how_ they served: we mean the force not to be a sham one; we do not want soldiers in joke, we require them to come forward in good earnest. All matters concerning the time, place, and mode of their service should lie with the government. Once enrolled and trained, they should be at her Majesty's disposal; they should be her _bonâ fide_ soldiers, only not drawing pay, nor, except under certain circumstances, rations.