e amount of the evil?--It is manifest that,
though a great army may easily defeat or disperse another _army_, less
or greater, yet it is not in a like degree formidable to a determined
_people_, nor efficient in a like degree to subdue them, or to keep them
in subjugation--much less if this people, like those of Spain in the
present instance, be numerous, and, like them, inhabit a territory
extensive and strong by nature. For a great army, and even several great
armies, cannot accomplish this by marching about the country, unbroken,
but each must split itself into many portions, and the several
detachments become weak accordingly, not merely as they are small in
size, but because the soldiery, acting thus, necessarily relinquish much
of that part of their superiority, which lies in what may be called the
enginery of war; and far more, because they lose, in proportion as they
are broken, the power of profiting by the military skill of the
Commanders, or by their own military habits. The experienced soldier is
thus brought down nearer to the plain ground of the inexperienced, man
to the level of man: and it is then, that the truly brave man rises, the
man of good hopes and purposes; and superiority in moral brings with it
superiority in physical power. Hence, if the Spanish armies have been
defeated, or even dispersed, it not only argues a want of magnanimity,
but of sense, to conclude that the cause _therefore_ is lost. Supposing
that the spirit of the people is not crushed, the war is now brought
back to that plan of conducting it, which was recommended by the Junta
of Seville in that inestimable paper entitled 'PRECAUTIONS,' which plan
ought never to have been departed from, except by compulsion, or with a
moral certainty of success; and which the Spaniards will now be
constrained to re-adopt, with the advantage, that the lesson, which has
been received, will preclude the possibility of their ever committing
the same error. In this paper it is said, 'let the first object be to
avoid all general actions, and to convince ourselves of the very great
hazards without any advantage or the hope of it, to which they would
expose us.' The paper then gives directions, how the war ought to be
conducted as a war of partizans, and shews the peculiar fitness of the
country for it. Yet, though relying solely on this unambitious mode of
warfare, the framers of the paper, which is in every part of it
distinguished by wisdom, speak with c