The Free Trade and Bullionist orators will exclaim that this statement is overcharged--that these apprehensions are entirely chimerical--that neither France nor Russia have the slightest intention of going to war with us--that the days of hostility between nations are at an end--that, even if we were attacked, our resources are greater than ever--and that the insular situation of Great Britain gives her a security which renders the maintenance of costly armaments for the national defence wholly unnecessary. This is what they _will say_; and we tell them what _they will not say_.--They will never allude to the arguments which follow, which will demonstrate the reality of all this peril as clearly as any proposition in Euclid; if they do allude to them, it will only be to ridicule and misrepresent--the usual resource of detected error in presence of irresistible arguments. They will never allude to the facts or arguments adduced on the other side; but, treating the whole persons who adduce them--and ourselves among the rest--as utter fanatics and monomaniacs, continue to inculcate on their numerous readers--who never look at any papers on the other side--the entire security of the nation, the evident advent of a time when all wars are to cease, our secure and unassailable position, and the utter folly of incurring the certain evil of present expense for the purpose of warding off such contingent, remote, and chimerical dangers. We are well aware of the ability with which this method of upholding delusions is carried on, and of the readiness with which it is listened to both by the opulent and powerful class whose means of amassing fortunes would be diminished, and the numerous class whose burdens would in a slight degree be increased by a change of system. The argument, that the era of wars has ceased, that Peace Congresses are henceforth to supersede the logic of cannon, and that the sooner we disband our troops, and sell our ships of the line, as a costly relic of a preadamite age, the better--would be an extremely strong one, and deserving of the most serious consideration, if it had any foundation in fact. But if this is not the case--if, on the contrary, the facts are all of an opposite character--then the argument, based on such a fallacious foundation, becomes the strongest which can be urged on the other side. Now, without going back to former times and the annals of history, let us attend only to our own days, and what we see around us, to ascertain whether there is any likelihood of war becoming unknown among men, and a real millennium causing all swords to be turned into pruning-hooks.