time) to propose, at a meeting of the county, in this very room, that the nation should be raised in a mass, similar to that which the French had at that time raised; and he would now give the reasons which weighed with him then, and weigh with him still more now; which reasons will consist in applying to the present actual circumstances of the war between Britain and France, the circumstances of the three greatest wars in their consequences that ever existed; the war of Hannibal, the war of America, and the late war of nine Powers against France.

Much of his studies had been applied in tracing the causes of the rise and fall of Nations, and on that account he hoped for the indulgence of this meeting.

The War of Hannibal.

It appears from Livy, that Hannibal entered Italy with 100,000 men, and that the Roman Army was equally nu

merous,

but weakened by detaching 30,000 to the defence of different parts of Italy. The consequence was, that Hannibal, in all his first battles, defeated, with a large army, troops that were less numerous. But the loss of 50,000 men, at the battle of Cannæ, opened the eyes of the Romans to their danger, and they raised all the Roman citizens in a mass. Livy says, that in the first subsequent lustrum, the number of Roman citizens was 138,000 and the legions about twenty-five. A legion consisted of near 5,000 men; but by the addition of an equal number of Allies to it, it consisted of nearly 10,000; so that the Roman Army, when the mass was raised, consisted of about 250,000. This was not all. The Romans did what they had never done before, they added 8,000 slaves to supply the place of the Prisoners taken at Cannæ, and z 2

called the seamen from the coasts to the army, which by these means caine then to consist of above 300,000 men. The state of the war then came to be an army of above 300,000 against an army of 50, or 60,000. I fix upon that number because the Allies of Rome did not revolt till late in the war. With the raising of the mass the fate of the war turned, till Hannibal was driven out of Italy.

Look at Africa, a short time after. When Hannibal was driven into Africa, the Romans sent a great army after him; but the Carthaginians, instead of raising their people in a mass, trusted their fate to mercenaries and auxiliaries, and to a single battle, instead of making the war a war of posts in their own coun try, as they ought to have done then, and England ought to do now. Thus Rome saved Italy by raising their people in a mass, and Carthage lost Africa by not following the example.

American War.

When that war began, the Americans had not one regiment, one ship, one fort-I had almost said one shilling, because they had only a revenue of 75,000l. to defend their sea-coast, 1800 miles in length, exposed to the fleets of England, and the armies of England and Germany; yet they were victorious in the war, and by a singularity unparalleled in history, took one army prisoners in the North, and another in the South, that were sent to conquer them. What was the cause? The cause was, that they raised their people in a mass, instead of raising a partial Militia, or a partial Army, and forming them into regiments and squa drons: they formed their whole people into one great regiment, and from that great regiment formed as many small ones as they pleased.

War

War of Nine Powers against France. When the French Monarchy was overturned, nine Powers joined against France, whose armies amounted to 700,000 men; France had only an army of 300,000 men, with disorders and civil war. What was the remedy that she applied? She raised her people in a general mass; by which I mean they called out the sixth man, leaving the other five for the purposes of agriculture and manufacture, which gave them an army of a million of men. prove it thus; (Mons. Neckar says), that France contained 28,000,000 of people; I shall suppose them only 24,000,000. But a nation consists of half males and half females; this brings the number of males down to 12,000,000; but of this number one half are under eighteen, or above fifty years of age, which brings the 12,000,000 of males down to 6,000,000. The French armed and disciplined every sixth man, and consequently in an instant, had an army of 1,300,000 men, consisting of the old and new army. From that moment the fate of the war turned; the nine Powers sunk more by their fears than their battles; were easily defeated, and deserted each other. The King of Prussia, with his immortal brother's immortal army, slunk away first. Holland, with all her money-Spain, with all her high spirit followed. The powers of Italy tumbled down one upon another. The magnanimous Emperors of Germany and Russia, as they were called, gave way like the rest. And, last of all, England, brave and generous England, slowly, reluctantly, indignantly, pitying and pitied, closed the melancholy

scene.

Here is the fourth instance of the power of a nation raised in mass in a defensive war.

Application.

Sir John made a general observation, that a nation which defends itself, has an advantage in war over a nation which attacks for this reason, that the defending nation can make use of its mass at home, when the attacking nation cannot make use of its mass abroad. The soldiers of the nine Powers against France were scattered from Gibraltar in the South, to Petersburgh in the North. They could not find food for their armies in such long marches, nor cattle to draw stores; and they must have perished by the mere changes of climate, of which a proof is, that in the first year of the war the King of Prussia lost half his army, by only marching through Champaign and back again. But this general observation applies still stronger to the par ticular case, when the defending nation has a sea to protect it from the attacking one. King William, with a fleet of twelve great ships of the line, and five hundred great transports, could not land more than 14,000 men in Britain. But suppose France, without a navy at all, and with no power of transports, should land in Britain 30,000 men against a powerful navy, and an incredible number of small craft, then the state of the war would stand thus: The sixth man out of twelve millions in Britain, would be 500,000 from the new mass, added to the old army; that is to say, the contest would be betwixt 30,000 men on one side, and 800,000 on the other; with this advantage on the side of the last, that they would have to defend a country covered with woods, hedges, ditches, and stone walls, more than any country in the world, where every oak would be a fort to fire from, and a bastion to protect the man who fired from behind it.

This