our fyftem of national defence would at no very remote period be completed. Already had the foundation of inftruction been laid that the higher ranks in our army had directed their attention feriously to the subject; that their fuccefs had been equal to the warmest hope which could have been entertained. The study of a few months had made many Officers proficient in all the more difficult details of warfare; and the effects of this knowledge had been contemplated on the thores of Egypt, that field of British glory. Poffeffed of the foundation of inftruction, we had the means of its moft general diffufion. We had the grounds of its moft general application. We had an army greater than we poffeffed in any former war; we had augmented it by a new and extraordinary levy; we had to add to it the great mafs of the armed population of the country. With all these varied means of protection, properly organized and effectually, even the honourable and gallant Officer himself, who had fhewn himself the moft cautious, and the moft anxious, for the fafety of the country, was ready to allow that we should be abfolutely fafe. He agreed with the honourable and gallant Officer, that we ought not for a moment to relax our exertions. We had to maintain a great and arduous ftruggle, but if we fupported it with adequate energy and fpirit, it would terminate in glory to this country, and fhame and difappointment to the enemy. He took occafion particularly to allude to what had been thrown out about the filling up of the regular regiments by draughts from the militia. He thought that this was a very ungracious meafure, and one which at the prefent moment it would be highly inexpedient to refort to. The privates of the militia, no doubt, feel in common with their countrymen the value of the facred objects for which they were to contend, and were anxious to have an opportunity of fhewing that they would give no place to troops in the fervice of his Majefty in the ardour of their devotion to their country. To call in the militia Officers to affift in breaking up thofe corps whofe difcipline they had, by their affiduity and zeal, completed, would be to injure their fentiments as men, and to wound their feelings as foldiers. They, no doubt, hoped, as the reward of their labours, to lead into the field a body of brave men, ready to facrifice their lives in punishing the temerity of an ambitious and unprincipled foe. He fhould, therefore, relift any attempt to diffolve the prefent eftablishment of the militia. We had already inade provifion for the fupply of

the

the regular army, and it would be highly impolitic to refort to a measure of the nature to which he had referred. At the prefent moment generous emulation fhould be encouraged, but any thing like rivalthip, founded in confiderations of jealoufy, could not fail to be highly pernicious,

The right hon Gentleman declared that he felt extremely happy at feeing that ftrong and ardent spirit of loyalty and of patriotifm which was now evidently pervading every rank of fociety throughout the kingdom. It was firft lit up in the north, from thence it was feen to kindle in the capital, and it was now catching from town to town, from village to village, and to every hamlet within the island, and he had every reason to hope that it would in a fhort time manifest itself in one universal blaze throughout the empire in fuch brightnels of fplendour, as would not only dazzle and dismay the proud ufurper, and make him thake upon his throne, but that would alfo be the admiration and wonder of all furrounding nations. Yet, much as he approved of the conduct and patriotifm of the militia in general, and of the public at large, for the difpofition which they had manifefted on the prefent occafion, he ftill thought it would be advifeable that two or three officers thould be taken from the half-pay, and added to every one officer that thould be appointed for the new levies by virtue of other orders; by that means we would be enabled to bring forward a large, effective, and tractable force, which would, by adopting that method, be ready much fooner, and be more capable of oppofing with effect any invader, than they poffibly could by any other mode. The honourable Colonel, although he had thought proper to apologife to the Houfe for troubling them, as he had termed it, with the obfervations which he had just delivered, had moft honourably discharged his duty-it was his duty as an Englishman, it was a duty which he owed to that Houfe as one of its Members, to deliver whatever important thoughts might occur to his mind at this momentous crisis, and it was above all moft particularly his duty while he flood in that fituation, to make the Houfe acquainted with what were the opinions entertained by, and what the modes of remedying the threatened danger, which occurred to the mind of fo able an officer as the hon. Gentleman himself undoubtedly was, and who had had fuch great and repeated opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the powers, the practice, and the ideas of the enemy, and who had alfo fuch frequent opportunities of hearing the opinions of the firft military men 4 N2

on other parts of the Continent. With refpect to the propriety of our having field fortifications, he however could not fee it to the extent which had been mentioned by the hon.. Gentleman; but in that particular he confeffed that he was not as capable of judging of the propriety of military plans as the hon. Gentleman was of defigning them. And as to the fituation of our nayal arfenals, he imagined that no perfon could, in any the flighteft degree, miftake the hon. Gentleman, at least in fuch a manner as to fuppofe that, when he fpoke of the means of their defence, he meant to convey an idea that they were totally defencelefs, and that they required fomething like the plan which he had fuggefted to make them capable of making any ftand at all against an enemy. No; he conceived that the hon. Gen'leman muft mean to warn us, left we fhould be led away by a groundless hope, by a falfe idea of honour; not that we thould be parfimonious, and avoid building fortificatious on account of the expence, for no man could be fo filly as to fuppofe, that Gowernment would for a moment hefitate about the coft in an object of fuch great, fuch national importance, but that, we fhould not be lavish of the blood of Englifhmen; that we thould not waste the bravery and the lives of our countrymen, in a manner that would be avoided by a little previous trouble and expence. When fpeaking of the defence of our coafts alfo, it was poffible, though in a diftant degree, that the hon. Gentleman might be liable to be mifunderflood. He had faid that fome parts of our coafts were more convenient or more affailable than others, and expreffed a wifh that the former fhould be defended by fortification; but it most certainly could never be the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, that we were to fortify an extent of fifty miles of coat without any intervention; no, the hon. Gentleman knew there were many points, many distances of our coaft that were for miles together fortified by nature in fuch a manner as to preclude the neceffity of any artificial fortification whatever. But there were many points at which we might, at a very finall expence, very confiderably improve the ftrength of our frontier. There were two objects to be taken into confideration in attending to the obfervations of the hon. Gentleman: the one was, that we might collect our forces in fuch a compact manner as almost to erfure the fafety of particular places; the other was, that we hould not fritter them away by fpreading them too wide, or in detached bodies, without forming a proper train of con

nexion to draw them together at a moment of alarm or danger. To the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's fpeech, he must obferve that, while the people of England fo honourably and fo bravely defire to fpare themselves, he trufted the Govern ment of the country or the Legislature would never be found deficient in what was their duty, but that they would let the people be convinced that it was the wifh, that it was the most anxious defire of their fuperiors to fpare them, by exerting every power which their fituation invefted them with, in avoiding the wanton wafte of the bravery of their country men, or any random or unavoidable effufion of their blood. He trusted that the means which had been entrusted to the hands of Government would be employed to the best purpose poffible for the defence of the nation, and the honour and dignity of his Majesty's Crown. But ftill he wished to fee things in the plaineft point of view; he wished to fee the af. fairs of the country in fuch a fituation that no man could poffibly be fo blind or so perverfe as to fay that he did not fee them to a demonftration, in the fame manner as he might fee a propofition in the mathematics when it was explained to him; unlefs, indeed, he were to fay, "I will not fee the latter, because I have not learned it," or, "I will not fee the former, because I am not a profeffional man." He then relied on the obftinate courage and in the ftrong feelings of Englinen, that they would not be able to brook the idea, that they could not bear a moment from refenting the affront, which would be given them by a body of Frenchmen even having it to fay that they had come here to fight us for our country. (Hear, bear, hear!) Some people, he understood, had endeavoured to calculate upon the poffibility or the amount of the chances there were against their hazarding or even fucceeding in fuch an enterprife, at leaft fo far as to ef fect a landing on our fhores; this, he thought was beyond all powers of calculation, for there were certain actions of fuch a nature that, according to the laws of war, were deemed fo impoffible, that every General who attempted them was Jiable to be broke throughout the greatest part of Europe, and therefore he did not attempt them; and upon these very paints a French General would be liable to be broke if he did not attempt, and therefore he would undertake fuch enterprizes, and hazard what another General would not venture to do. Befide that, Gentlemen were to confider what exertions were likely to be made by the proud defpot of France to fupport his ufurped throne. If we were to look at what

he

he had done on former occafions, we muft plainly perceive that it was most probable that he would facrifice forty or fifty thousand Frenchmen, if it had any chance of promoting his ambition, with as little feeling as that with which he would millions of Englishmen, at the altar of his pride. The hon. Gentleman then, he was forry to hear it, had been blamed for his fuggefting any idea of fortifying London, and the right hon. the Secretary at War had referred him to what our ancestors would have faid if they were to have heard fuch a hint thrown out. The practice or the opinions of our ancestors, however, had no analogy to the prefent mo ment. The right hon. Secretary had alfo alluded to the number of our naval force; we had, no doubt, as he had ftated, about eighty or ninety thousand feamen, but these could not be fairly taken into the calculation at the prefent period; there were thousands of them difperfed at diftant parts of the world, and of courfe they could be of no effective fervice for home defence at any time of fudden emergency. But even if they could, it must be considered that the powers required would be of a different nature from that of a great part of our naval force. We would have an immenfe flotilla, which would cover miles of our coaft, to contend with, and how far the navy was prepared to meet a force of that nature in fuch a manner as totally to discomfit them, he would not take upon him to fay. If they were completely equal to the tafk, where was then the ufe for that bill, now the fubject of debate, which he hoped would be foon in another Houfe, and no doubt would in a very little time be prefented to his Majefty, that it might receive his royal affent? When the right hon. Secretary made a reference to our ancestors, he should have recollected that it was not in their power to call out a force of 400,000 men, as we did now, as one clafs of an additional force; he fhould confider alfo that the circumftauces in which they were placed did not require fuch exertions; the means of the enemy, the power of all furrounding nations was then fo limited, and the mode of waifare was fo different, that a perfon might as well fay, "Let us look at what was the practice of our ancestors; we will then fee that our bows and arrows should be our only weapons, that our corfelets and our helmets fhould be our only means of defence, and that we should not infult the people of England by giving them artillery, with which they might more powerfully annoy the enemy, or by fortifying Portfmouth or Plymouth as a means of defence.".