The Daily Dispatch: April 6, 1864., [Electronic resource]

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Long exemption from War.

Since the reign of James the Second there has been no important battle on English soil. The wars in which the nation has since been engaged have not desolated her soil, Internal dissensions have been healed, and the isolated position of the sturdy island, defeated by a powerful navy, has protected her from foreign invasion. Rarely have a people enjoyed so long an exemption from the horrors of war. Alarms of the French have occasionally disturbed her serenity, but even Napoleon was never able to plant his foot on English soil. No dwellings in flames, no desolated fields, no shock of hostile armies, no cities doomed to sack and flame, in all that time. But no nation can expect perpetual immunity from the common evil of war, and least of all one which has carried fire and sword over all the earth. The application of steam to naval ornaments renders it doubtful whether her island position will secure her from invasion in the event of a continental war. The inextinguishable hostility of Ireland would in that event be a dangerous element at her own doors, and the only spot of earth where the dove of peace has found a long foothold be submerged beneath the destructive waves of war.