The country was about to face a great crisis in its history. Yet, as the year 1894 opened, there were little evidences of the approaching storm. It is true that the Gladstone Cabinet were still in power, and were passing exasperating measures. But this was nothing new. Last year they had abolished Compulsory Vaccination, and had passed the Country Estates Popular Appropriation Act. They had inaugurated the first Session of the present one by suppressing the Volunteer Movement, and cutting down the Naval and Military votes respectively to the modest figure of L2,000,000 a year; and they pointed to the Channel Tunnel, now opened about sixteen months, for a triumphant vindication of these Imperial economies. They argued that a country that could pour a perpetual stream of Cook's Tourists night and day over to the Continent, had given a guarantee for preserving International peace such as would warrant it in reducing the expense for its defences to a pecuniary minimum; and, though they met with some opposition from the Permanent Departments, and were hotly criticised by an angry mob of naval and military men, who found themselves, at a moment's notice, both thrown out of work, and deprived of their pay, they, nevertheless, carried their point, and effected the proposed reductions. But a thunder-clap was about to fall upon the unsuspecting country from a blue sky, and the Channel Tunnel, which had inspired its misguided leaders with a baseless confidence, was destined to inflict the shock.