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once more intelligent, and maintained at a larger proportionate cost, than that of England. The population numbers about four millions. Of these the number liable for militia service is about six hundred and fifty thousand, consisting of all the male inhabitants between eighteen and sixty, divided into four classes, viz. :

1st class. Unmarried men or widowers without children, from eighteen to thirty.

2nd class. Unmarried men or widowers without children, from thirty to forty-five.

3rd class. Married men or widowers with children, from eighteen to forty-five.

4th class. All between forty-five and sixty.

The exemptions are few and equitable. For the purposes of enrolment the whole country is divided into military districts, which are successively subdivided into brigade divisions, regimental divisions, and company divisions.

Each district, commanded by a district staff officer with the title of Deputy Adjutant-General, contains two or more brigade divisions; each brigade division, administered by a Brigade-Major, contains three or more regimental divisions; each regimental division, provided with one Lieutenant-Colonel and two Majors of Reserve Militia, contains eight company divisions, to each of which are attached one Captain and two Lieutenants of the Reserve Militia. The officers of the Reserve Militia are permanent, and must be resident within the limits of their respective divisions. For the purposes of enrolment the company division is the unit, and the captain thereof, assisted by his subalterns, is charged with the duty of keeping at all times a properly corrected roll of all the militiamen resident within the company division, and must, when required, produce for active service such numbers of men,

either as volunteers or, if necessary, through the operation of the ballot, as may be necessary to complete his proportion of the quota required to be furnished by the regimental division of which his company division forms a part; the enrolment throughout the regimental division generally being supervised by the lieutenant-colonel and majors.

It is true the above is only a paper organisation, and in time of need it would be effective only in providing recruits for the different battalions; the fault of the system being that the battalions would have to be formed in haste and hastily provided with officers and non-commissioned officers. The above remarks apply to the militia proper, which in time of war would constitute the main Canadian army.

The advanced guard of that army is represented by the existing force of forty thousand volunteer or active militia, organised in battalions and distributed in fixed proportions through the different military districts, extending from Lake Huron to Halifax. The force thus maintained in time of peace by Canada gives rather more than one active militiaman to every hundred of population, a far larger proportion of military force to population than obtains in England. The period of

service in the active militia is three years, and the men who have fulfilled the conditions of that service then fall back into the general reserve, but are not liable to be called out again until all the men of their respective company divisions shall have been first taken.

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company head-quarters without the necessity of sleeping away from their homes: but latterly most of the battalions have voluntarily assembled yearly at their respective battalion head-quarters for a period of eight days, which is considered equivalent to the sixteen independent drills required by law; and for which attendance the men receive their yearly pay of eight dollars, with free rations in addition. This plan has the advantage of exciting the emulation of the different scattered companies thus brought together once in the year; and in order to make a good show at the yearly muster, the men perform voluntary drills at their company head-quarters in anticipation of the yearly training in battalion.

Before the recall of the regular troops, brigade camps of instruction were formed yearly in different parts of Canada, the nucleus of each brigade consisting of a regular regiment with a proportion of regular artillery; the volunteer battalions by three or four at a time, to which were joined a squadron of volunteer cavalry, passing through these brigades in succession, and thereby learning more in eight days than it would be possible to learn by drill in isolated battalions in a month.

To provide against Fenian attacks an organisation was given to the whole military force in Canada, regular and militia, similar in principle to that which has proved so astonishingly successful in Germany. In the autumn of 1866 the whole force was told off in field brigades and garrisons of posts. The nucleus of each brigade was supplied by a regular battalion; the component corps and brigade staff were detailed; the necessary stores and field equipment collected at the different brigade alarm posts, which were fixed at convenient distances along the frontier line;

and all that was required to place them in the field fully equipped and ready to march was the order to mobilise.

The above organisation in principle is one of which we have repeatedly advocated the application to England, and supplies the most obvious means of effecting that fusion of our now isolated services into one harmonious whole which Mr. Cardwell has announced as the main object of his military policy.

The establishment of military schools at convenient centres in the several districts in connection with the infantry, cavalry, and artillery of the regular army, placed the means of military instruction within reach of the Canadian youth. Five thousand young men in successive batches passed the allotted period of three months at the schools, and obtained certificates entitling them to commissions in the regular militia of the country whenever it may be thought necessary to organise that force. Many of these cadets are now serving as officers in the volunteer militia; and through their agency volunteer corps have been formed in the most remote districts where the inhabitants had never previously seen a uniformed soldier.

No finer military material can anywhere be found than that of which the Canadian volunteer militia is composed. When placed on duty their aptitude and respect for discipline have been extraor dinary, and their efficiency has been tested on more than one critical occasion. The readiness with which all the corps turned out along the extended line of frontier in 1866, 67, and 70, and the ra pidity of their concentration, reflect, especially when we consider the wide distances separating the different companies in the country districts of Canada, no small credit on the spirit and loyalty of the men

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These circumstances impart an additional value to the signs of improving feeling on the part of Americans towards England. The Alabama and Fishery disputes arranged, it may be hoped that questions of contention between the two nations will not soon again present themselves. But who can forecast the mutations of sentiment of the American democracy? If cause of quarrel should by any chance arise under the present relative conditions of England and America, the treatment of Canada by the English Government will all too probably form a a disastrous page-in no case can it form a creditable one-in English history.

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JOHN ASGILL; AND THE COWARDLINESS OF DYING.

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10 often as, a century or two ago, we find a man of good position and acknowledged ability confined for a very long period in a debtors' prison without anyone's coming to his release, we may usually conIclude that there is some other force besides mere money-mishap which is acting as his gaoler. Especially,

if our incarcerated debtor is a man of notable genius and capacity, and an active politician to boot, are we likely to be right in imagining that something beyond the machinations of tradesmen is shutting the door of the world upon him. He must have committed the unpardonable crime of offending the powers that be.

John Asgill, lawyer and ex-M.P., was thirty years a prisoner in the King's Bench for debt. He died there in the year 1738. If he had not been expelled from the House of Commons in 1707, it is probable that some one or other would have released him from durance and repaid himself through the abilities of the exprisoner. Asgill was expelled from the House of Commons ostensibly for atheism and blasphemy. He was neither atheist nor blasphemer, but he was incomprehensible to a number of virtuous people, which was much the same in effect. The title of the work for which, seven years after its publication, he was made a disbanded member' of the House, is as follows: 'An Argument proving that according to the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures, Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life without passing through Death, although the Humane Nature of Christ Himself could not be thus translated till He had passed through Death.' The motto prefixed to the title-page

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Nec vanis credite verbis ; Aspicite en faciatque fidem conspectus.

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Some years before his expulsion from the British Parliament he had also at an earlier date been ejected from the Irish House of CommonsMr. Asgill had made a purchase of land in Ireland out of his own money. With regard to this land some jugglery was effected, the result of which was that the rents ceased to arrive from the tenant. Asgill was then in the House, and unassailable for the debts which this loss entailed upon him. he says, 'in an interval of Privilege in 1707, being under an arrest, I removed myself by Habeas Corpus to the Fleet. In the session following, upon application to the House, I was by their order demanded out of custody (by their Sergeant-at-Arms with the mace), on Tuesday, December 16, 1707, and took my place in the House on the morrow.' Between Asgill's application for this release and his discharge from custody, the accusation we have named was brought against him as author of the treatise whose title we have quoted, and which was published in 1700. It seems almost as if his monetary misfortune had detracted from his respectability in the eyes of the House, so that they brought forward an old weapon and managed thereby to drive him out from amongst them; and as this misfortune led to his expulsion from the House, so that expulsion prevented anyone's allowing him either pity or privilege of any kind any more. But other causes more political than monetary were at work, and what tools happened to be within reach were made use of. The 18th December 1707 was appointed for Asgill's defence, which he made in his place in the House before a patient audience. In this

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defence, a copy of which he published in 1712 (for there was no verbatim reporting at that time), there is to be found a good deal of subdued 'chaffing' of the House. As he had not read his book within the walls, he told the assembly it was no misdemeanour of himself there. So that to disqualify him they must attribute some defect to his person. To which end he acknowledged himself to be the worst member in the House, and then alleged that fact as an argument for his protection therein: For,' said he, if you intend it a standing order for the worst member always to go out first, methinks everyone should lay his hand on his heart, lest he should be the proximus ardet. For'tis no breach of privilege to say we are all sinners. Our author possessed a certain piquant subtlety of argument, it will be observed. His real sin he alluded to as the having been too nimble in his faith,' and for this it would be difficult to frame an apology; but where expressions only were cavilled at, he made reply as follows: If by any of those expressions I have really given offence to any well-meaning Christian, I am very sorry for it, though I had no ill intention in it. But if any man be captious to take exception for exception sake, I am not concerned.' If anything had been brought forward of a nature to stagger a scantling in education,' he was sorry for it. He concludes his defence pluckily as follows: 'I do believe that had I turned this defence into a recantation, I had prevented my expulsion. But I have reserved my last words as my ultimate reason against that recantation. He that durst write that book dares not deny it.' In the work he published in 1712 containing a copy of his defence, with observations upon it, the first words which follow it are couched in the following humorous fashion: And what then?-Why then they called for candles; and I

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went away by the light of 'em. And after the previous question, and other usual ceremonies (as I suppose), I was expelled the House.'

Asgill had been member for the borough of Bramber, in the county of Sussex, having been elected in 1705. It seems somewhat singular that he should have been permitted to sit in the English House, after having been expelled from the Irish Parliament for a book which, as well as that expulsion, must have been sufficiently notorious; and that that book should have remained unnoticed by the English Parliament until seven years after its publication, and four years after it had been burnt by the Dublin hangman. But men's consciences have a strange faculty of sudden awakening, under the spur of any political or commercial interest. Let the conscience but run smoothly with the inclination, and it will be brisk enough at discernment of evil. This tardiness and sudden awakening are noticed by Asgill, as well as another fact leading to the belief that some underhand plotting was at work. We quote from his Defence: the petition here referred to is the Irish law-suit attempted to be raised with regard to his property:

But I can observe some of the same persons that had a hand in that petition, now are soliciting in your lobby with my book about 'em.

This is now the fourth Parliament in which I have had the honour to be a Member of this House with that gentleman, since I published this Argument (which hath not remained a secret).

'That gentleman' here referred to is the individual who brought forward the accusation against Asgill in the House. From this it would appear as if influences from Ireland were conspiring for Asgill's overthrow. It has been suggested, however, that the new Scotch members were the agents for his expulsion. Coming fresh into that

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