We have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in
ordinary wars. In the fatal battles which have drenched the continent
with blood, and shaken the system of Europe to pieces, we have never
had any considerable army of a magnitude to be compared to the least of
those by which, in former times, we so gloriously asserted our place
as protectors, not oppressors, at the head of the great commonwealth
of Europe. We have never manfully met the danger in front: and when the
enemy, resigning to us our natural dominion of the ocean, and abandoning
the defence of his distant possessions to the infernal energy of the
destroying principles which he had planted there for the subversion
of the neighbouring colonies, drove forth, by one sweeping law of
unprecedented despotism, his armed multitudes on every side, to
overwhelm the countries and states which had for centuries stood the
firm barriers against the ambition of France; we drew back the arm of
our military force, which had never been more than half raised to oppose
him. From that time we have been combating only with the other arm of
our naval power; the right arm of England I admit; but which struck
almost unresisted with blows that could never reach the heart of the
hostile mischief. From that time, without a single effort to regain
those outworks, which ever till now we so strenuously maintained, as
the strong frontier of our own dignity and safety, no less than the
liberties of Europe; with but one feeble attempt to succour those brave,
faithful, and numerous allies, whom, for the first time since the days
of our Edwards and Henrys, we now have in the bosom of France itself;
we have been intrenching, and fortifying, and garrisoning ourselves at
home: we have been redoubling security on security, to protect ourselves
from invasion, which has now become to us a serious object of alarm and
terror. Alas! the few of us who have protracted life in any measure near
to the extreme limits of our short period, have been condemned to see
strange things; new systems of policy, new principles, and not only
new men, but what might appear a new species of men. I believe that any
person who was of age to take a part in public affairs forty years ago
(if the intermediate space of time were expunged from his memory)
would hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest
authority, that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in
this island, and that in the neighbouring island there were at least
fourscore thousand more. But when he had recovered from his surprise on
being told of this army, which has not its parallel, what must be his
astonishment to be told again, that this mighty force was kept up for
the mere purpose of an inert and passive defence, and that in its far
greater part, it was disabled by its constitution and very essence from
defending us against an enemy by any one preventive stroke, or any one
operation of active hostility? What must his reflections be on learning
further, that a fleet of five hundred men of war, the best appointed,
and to the full as ably commanded as any this country ever had upon the
sea, was for the greater part employed in carrying on the same system of
unenterprising defence? what must be the sentiments and feelings of
one who remembers the former energy of England, when he is given to
understand that these two islands, with their extensive and everywhere
vulnerable coast, should be considered as a garrisoned sea-town; what
would such a man, what would any man think, if the garrison of so
strange a fortress should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to
make a sally; and that, contrary to all which has hitherto been seen in
war, an infinitely inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost
annihilated navy, ill found and ill manned, may with safety besiege this
superior garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the
place, merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack? Indeed,
indeed, my dear friend, I look upon this matter of our defensive system
as much the most important of all considerations at this moment. It has
oppressed me with many anxious thoughts, which, more than any bodily
distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know that I am.
Should it please Providence to restore to me even the late weak
remains of my strength, I propose to make this matter the subject of
a particular discussion. I only mean here to argue, that the mode of
conducting the war on our part, be it good or bad, has prevented even
the common havoc of war in our population, and especially among that
class whose duty and privilege of superiority it is to lead the way
amidst the perils and slaughter of the field of battle.