nse than young fighting men,--soldiers by training and
understanding,--had long since disacquired whatever knowledge and
habit of the profession they had gained in the War of Independence,
then more than thirty years past. "As far as American movements are
concerned," said one of Wellington's trusted officers, sent to report
upon the subject of Canadian defence, "the campaign of 1812 is almost
beneath criticism."[391] Instructed American opinion must sorrowfully
admit the truth of the comment. That of 1813 was not much better,
although some younger men--Brown, Scott, Gaines, Macomb, Ripley--were
beginning to show their mettle, and there had by then been placed at
the head of the War Department a secretary who at least possessed a
reasoned understanding of the principles of warfare. With every
material military advantage, save the vital one of adequate
preparation, it was found too late to prepare when war was already at
hand; and after the old inefficients had been given a chance to
demonstrate their incapacity, it was too late to utilize the young
men.

Jefferson, with curious insanity of optimism, had once written, "We
begin to broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulf Stream as of
our waters, within which hostilities and cruising are to be frowned on
for the present, and prohibited as soon as either consent or force
will permit;"[392] while at the same time, under an unbroken
succession of maritime humiliations, he of purpose neglected all naval
preparation save that of two hundred gunboats, which could not venture
out of sight of land without putting their guns in the hold. With like
blindness to the conditions to which his administration had reduced
the nation, he now wrote: "The acquisition of Canada this year [1812],
as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of
marching."[393] This would scarcely have been a misappreciation, had
his care for the army and that of his successor given the country in
1812 an effective force of fifteen thousand regulars. Great Britain
had but forty-five hundred in all Canada,[394] from Quebec to St.
Joseph's, near Mackinac; and the American resources in militia were to
hers as ten to one. But Jefferson and Madison, with their Secretary of
the Treasury, had reduced the national debt between 1801 and 1812 from
$80,000,000 to $45,000,000, concerning which a Virginia Senator
remarked: "This difference has never been felt by society. It has
produced no effect upon