s
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 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.

The other causes which sometimes affect the numbers of the lower
classes, but which I have shown not to have existed to any such degree
during this war,--penury, cold, hunger, nakedness,--do not easily reach
the higher orders of society. I do not dread for them the slightest
taste of these calamities from the distress