co-operation on the Continent, even to a greater extent, in the course
of the present year. If we compare this view of our own situation with
everything we can observe of the state and condition of our enemy; if
we can trace him labouring under equal difficulty in finding men to
recruit his army, or money to pay it; if we know that in the course of
the last year the most rigorous efforts of military conscription were
scarcely sufficient to replace to the French armies, at the end of the
campaign, the numbers which they had lost in the course of it; if
we have seen that the force of the enemy, then in possession of
advantages which it has since lost, was unable to contend with the
efforts of the combined armies; if we know that, even while supported
by the plunder of all the countries which they had overrun, the French
armies were reduced, by the confession of their commanders, to the
extremity of distress, and destitute not only of the principal
articles of military supply, but almost of the necessaries of life: if
we see them now driven back within their own frontiers, and confined
within a country whose own resources have long since been proclaimed
by their successive governments to be unequal either to paying or
maintaining them; if we observe that, since the last revolution, no
one substantial or effectual measure has been adopted to remedy the
intolerable disorder of their finances, and to supply the deficiency
of their credit and resources; if we see, through large and populous
districts of France, either open war levied against the present
usurpation, or evident marks of disunion and distraction, which the
first occasion may call forth into a flame; if, I say, Sir, this
comparison be just, I feel myself authorized to conclude from it,
not that we are entitled to consider ourselves certain of ultimate
success, not that we are to suppose ourselves exempted from the
unforeseen vicissitudes of war; but that, considering the value of
the object for which we are contending, the means for supporting
the contest, and the probable course of human events, we should be
inexcusable if at this moment we were to relinquish the struggle on
any grounds short of entire and complete security against the greatest
danger which has ever yet threatened the world; that from perseverance
in our efforts under such circumstances we have the fairest reason to
expect the full attainment of that object; but that at all events,
even if we ar