The statesman and the soldier declare that the fault lies with parliament and the people. They complain that parliament is niggardly in placing sufficient means at the disposal of the executive, and that the people are distrustful and over-inquisitive as to their application; ever too ready to attribute evil motives and incapacity to those set in authority over them. Parliament and the people, on the other hand, reply, that ample means are yearly allotted for the defence of the country, and that more would readily be forthcoming, had they reason to suppose that what has already been spent, has been well spent; their Humes and their Brights loudly and harshly denounce the nepotism, the incapacity, and the greed, which, according to them, disgrace the governing classes, and waste and weaken the resources of the land. And so the painful squabble ferments--no probable end to it being in view. Indeed, the public are permitted to know so little of the conduct of their most important affairs--silence is so strictly enjoined to the men at the helm--that the most carefully prepared indictment against an official delinquent is invariably evaded by the introduction of some new feature into his case, hitherto unknown to any but his brother officials, which at once casts upon the assailant the stigma of having arraigned a public servant on incomplete information, and puts him out of court. But if, in this the year of our Lord 1860, we have no means of discovering why millions of strong, brave, well-armed Englishmen should be so moved at the prospect of a possible attack from twenty or thirty thousand French, we have recently been placed in possession of the means of ascertaining why, some sixty years ago, this powerful nation was afflicted with a similar fit of timidity.