to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through centuries--that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies, England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish Lowlands, of those elegantly-formed men who are found in Devonshire, Cornwall, etc., of those _hardy_ men (a feature in human physics still more important) who are found in every district--if many are now resident in towns, most of them originated in rustic life; and from rustic life it is that the reservoir of towns is permanently fed. Rome was, England never will be, independent of her rural population. Rome never had a yeomanry, Rome never had a race of country gentlemen; England has both upon a scale so truly noble that it will be the simplest expression of that nobility to say, pointing to our villages, 'Behold the cradle of our army!' as inversely to say, pointing to that army: 'Behold the manhood of our villages!' As regards Rome, from the bisection of the Roman territory into two several corn districts depending upon a separate agriculture, it results that _her_ wealth could not be defeated and transferred; secondly, it results from the total subjection of Egypt, that no embargo _could_ be laid on the harvests of the Nile, and no famine _could_ be organized against Rome; thirdly, it results that the Roman military system was thus not liable to be affected by any dependency upon foreign grain. On the argument that this dependency had _always_ been proceeding gradually in Italy, so as virtually to reimburse itself by _vicarious_ culture, whereas in England the transition from independency to dependency, being accomplished (if at all) in one day by Act of Parliament, would be ruinously abrupt; and also on the argument _B_, that Rome, if slowly losing any recruiting districts at home, found compensatory districts all round the Mediterranean, whilst England could find no such compensatory districts--we deny that the circumstances of the Roman corn trade have _ever_ been stated truly; and we expect the thanks of our readers for drawing their attention to this outline of the points which essentially differenced it from the modern corn trade of England. England must, but Rome could _not_, reap from a foreign corn dependency: firstly, ruinous disturbance to the natural expansions of her wealth; secondly, famine by intervals for her vast population; thirdly, impoverishment to her recruiting service. These are the dreadful evils (some uniform, some contingent) which England would inherit of her native agriculture, but which Rome escaped under that partial transfer, never really accomplished. Meantime, let the reader remember that it is Rome, and not England--Rome historically, not England politically--which forms the _object_ of our exposure. England is but the _means_ of the illustration.