Note 123 — Chapter VIII · THE RIFLED GUN

In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this country had for some time been under discussion, in view of the increasingly aggressive temper of the French. Interest in national defence became general with the warning letter of the Duke of Wellington which appeared in The Times on the 9th January, 1847. In ’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time opinion was less agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by numbers of people, would inaugurate the millennium.