due to discipline and to the admirable organisation we have described, which imparted to him a solid confidence in his chiefs. We learned from Frederick the Great the infantry movements which have imparted to the British soldier such admirable steadiness under fire, and which enable our regiments to manœuvre like machines; the moral effect of such discipline on our soldiers was well exhibited in the loss of the Birken'head,' where the men went down standing as on parade. The art of war has now advanced a stage; it is not sufficient for us to make our isolated regiments perfect; the army, which is an aggregate of regiments and of the departments which supply those regiments, must be brought to the same machine-like regularity. We must learn from the Prussians this further lesson in military organisation.

The French, after their first defeats, possessed large numbers of men, large stores of matériel and of food, but they had no organisation of the nature of that which we have described; they had not arranged their military operations with reference to their lines of railway; they could not bring their supplies to the required spot at the required time; their means of information were defective. M. de Freycinet's book is the record of their efforts and of their failure.

A main cause of these misfortunes lay in the system which commits the functions of supply to the Intendance; the constitution of that department and its relation to the general staff and to the fighting department of the army, prevents that unity of organisation which contributed to the success of the Prussian armies. One of the important lessons of the late war is that in an army everything must converge to one head. In this respect the British Government has still much to learn; the problem which we have had before us for the last few years is how to develope the fighting power of our troops by perfecting the department of supply, at the same time retain ing efficient Parliamentary control. It is a great misfortune for England that in their endeavour to solve this problem, both Sir John Pakington and Mr. Cardwell have committed themselves to the policy of creating the Control Department, based mainly on the model of the French Intendance, but possessing defects even more serious. The Control Department is placed under an executive head, viz. the Surveyor-general of Ordnance, whose tenure of office is political, and whose selection must therefore depend more upon his seat in Parliament than upon his professional ability. We believe this to be a complete error. The executive head of a military department of supply and transport should form an integral part of the general staff

of the army; moreover he should be practically conversant with the management of armies in war; he should possess technical knowledge of the stores and supplies, as well as great scientific attainments to enable him to judge of modern inventions; he should also be personally acquainted with all the officers under him as he selects them for employment or recommends them for promotion. A member of Parliament cannot be invariably found who possesses these qualifications, and if found, would probably be removed by the exigencies of politics when he had become conversant with his duties. The proper function of the Parliamentary head of a department is that of controlling the expenditure of the executive branches.

It would have been far sounder administration, when we abolished the Ordnance and other separate military offices, to have committed the whole executive business of the management of an army when in garrison or in the field (except the mere provision of money) to the Commander-in-Chief. Under such an arrangement, the Surveyor-General of Ordnance would probably have undertaken the regulation of the manufacturing departments, and of the purchases of stores and supplies; but the local detailed management of the stores and transport would have been in the hands of the military Staff, under the general officer in command of the district, subject of course to audit. The supervision of such duties would naturally fall to the Quartermaster-General's department. That officer's true function, in addition to other duties, is to superintend all that in Prussia is entrusted to the Department for Supervising the Lines of Communication. If, instead of creating a Control Department with a rate of pay far in excess of that allotted to military officers, we had placed the local executive business of the supply departments under the Quartermaster-General, and had allotted the purely banking functions to paymasters or civil war-office officials, we should have insured systematic action, financial control, and greater efficiency than we now possess, and we should have obtained it at far less expense. The easiest remedy for the errors of our present arrangement is to place the Control Department directly under the QuartermasterGeneral, converting the pay division into a branch of the Accountant-General's department of the War-Office, and abolishing the highly-paid ranks of Controller and DeputyController. We are not, however, writing a treatise on the organisation of the British army; we have simply endeavoured to point out the lessons of the late war as bearing on military art.

General Chanzy, in his History of the Second Army of the

Loire, says, The cause of our defeats is to be found in the 'weakness and insufficiency of our military organisation, which has been injured for some time in consequence of blind or erroneous ideas; as much as in the want of concert which was a governing feature of the strategical combinations.' It is curious to see from his account how slowly he obtained information as to detached parts of his own army, and how totally ignorant he was of the movements of Bourbaki and Faidherbe, even when they were all combining to assist Paris. What a contrast was this to the Prussian movements! We have shown how by the electric telegraph and the railway their invading armies were brought into immediate connexion with each other, and with their head-quarters at home. The Uhlans who swept the country in front of the advancing columns were the feelers thrown out from each division, forming the farthest points of the network of information which finally centred in the general sitting over a map in his office, from whom emanated the orders for advancing, fighting, or retreating. This systematic organisation, without which the railways and the telegraph would have remained of comparatively small utility, was an advantage to the Prussian army as great as the invention of many new implements of destruction; and we are confident that no nation can enter successfully into a war with Prussia until it has created an organisation for intelligence, movement, and supply, as effective as that which has converted the German army into so perfect a machine for war in the hands of Moltke. But the genius of Moltke himself would not have enabled him to surpass the achievements of his illustrious predecessors in the art of war, if he had not had at his disposal instruments which none of them possessed; and the triumph of the German armies is due not only to the skill of their commanders and the valour of their soldiers, but to the new and astonishing mechanism placed in their hands by the inventive genius of British science-by George Stephenson and Charles Wheatstone. These men have by their inventions changed not only the art of war but all the social relations of mankind.

ART. VII.-1. The Pastoral of the Irish Hierarchy on Education. Dublin: 1871.

2. Report of the Royal Commission on Primary Education in Ireland. Presented to Parliament by command of Her Majesty: 1870.

IF the time has now come for the readjustment of the higher education of Ireland, it is satisfactory to know that our course is determined by certain definite and consistent principles already adopted by the State, which establish its policy on a sure foundation beyond the conflict of sects and the tumult of fluctuating opinion. We have now been engaged for a period of forty years in reforming the abuses of Irish administration and abolishing those political and social anomalies which maintained the supremacy of a faction and kept the masses of Ireland in chronic discontent. We have cut down the Irish Church Establishment, though it had its roots in three hundred years of national history; and we have reformed the land laws by a measure so exceptional and yet so clearly demanded by the peculiar circumstances of the country, that it has created a new sense of security in the minds of the peasantry, and laid, we trust, the foundations of lasting prosperity and contentment. The next work will be to remodel the machinery of higher education in Ireland in such a way as, consistently with past legislation, to satisfy the just demands and the proper requirements of the Catholic population. Knowing as we do how much our general civilisation depends, not only for its progress but for its permanence, on the completeness of the higher instruction, and consequently of the institutions by which it is communicated, we are all the more anxious that in a country like Ireland, so deficient in general culture, and yet with a traditional love for learning, the provision for supporting literary and intellectual life should be more ample and better organised than it is at present.

In attempting to establish that educational equality which Mr. Gladstone rightly described as the indispensable complement of religious equality, it is evident that the legislature must be careful to deal with the whole question upon a clear and intelligible principle of state policy. For it is only evenhanded justice, applying the same principle in each case to similar conditions, that can control contending interests or trim the balance of rival influences. We have already, as a State, decided that the day of sectarian exclusiveness in Ire

land is at an end, and that all Irish institutions of every class shall be freed from sectarian influences. Now, in carrying out the policy of equal justice between the sects, we did not destroy the privileges of the minority with the mere view of handing them over to the majority, or abolish one ascendency with the idea of replacing it by another. Our legislative watchword is still justice to all parties; but we shall as firmly resist those who demand more than justice as we have those who heretofore insisted on giving less.

It will be necessary, therefore, to a proper understanding of the Irish University question, that we should exactly see the nature of the demand that is put forward by very influential persons in the name of complete educational equality. The Roman Catholic bishops have published several manifestoes in which they presume to speak for the whole Catholic people, and to deal with their whole intellectual interests; and they deserve our gratitude for telling us so explicitly the precise nature of their demands. They demand, then, in formal and categorical terms, the demolition of the existing system of mixed education, and assert their right to the sole superintendence of both the higher and the lower education of the Catholics of Ireland. They say, 'We will never cease to 'oppose to the utmost of our power the Model Schools, Queen's Colleges, Trinity College, and all similar institutions dangerous to the faith and morals of Catholics.' They demand in the sphere of primary education that in all schools that are exclusively Catholic there shall be the removal of all ' restrictions upon religious instruction, so that the fulness of 'distinctive religious teaching may enter into the course of 'daily secular education with full liberty for the use of Catho'lic books and religious emblems, and for the performance of ' religious exercises; and that the right be recognised of the 'lawful pastors of the children in such schools to have access 'to them, to regulate the whole business of religious instruc'tion in them, and to remove objectionable books, if any; and in such schools, the teachers, the books, and the inspectors 'should be Catholic.' There is a further demand, as regards intermediate education, that all existing endowments, whether derived from Protestant or Catholic bounty, shall be thrown into a common fund, and applied to open scholarships or grants in aid of Middle-class Schools, on the principle of payment by results. On the subject of the higher education their language is somewhat more guarded. While they assert a right to have a Catholic University endowed by the State, they are willing to acquiesce in the alternative of one National Uni