striking illustration of the probabilities of the present war. There is no superiority in the North to be compared with that which the French possessed. They captured towns, they overran provinces, they won the most terrible battle on record, they reached and obtained the very object of their march. But the length of that march, from Warsaw to Moscow, had ruined them. Russia was not an ordinary kingdom, the loss of whose capital is a decisive blow; it was an enormous space a huge body without a heart. The sword might be thrust into it anywhere, nowhere with mortal effect. It was cutting water with a knife. So with the Southern States, there is nothing at which to strike--no vulnerable point. An invader may march through them and countermarch-cross them and recross-but after all this they will continue in a military sense about as capable of continued resistance as before.

But the conditions of the present conflict may be illustrated more closely than by the Russian campaign. It is simply a repetition of our own experience on the same soil. The North protests against rebellion-so did we. They invoke the laws, the integrity of the empire-we did the same. We also possessed an overwhelming naval force and blockaded the ports. They believe that large numbers in the South are really in their hearts favourable to their cause-so did Lord North. They undertake to vanquish space-we made the same attempt. Hence, there is no new

problem to be solved; the subject has been well explored, the results are all known. Moreover, we undertook an easy task when compared with this. We had the advantage of veteran troops to oppose to raw levies. We had a much greater superiority in population, in wealth, and credit. We had a great military prestige. We really commanded what is now but hoped for, a portion of the people, including the city of New York, not only favourable to our cause, but actually fighting on our side. And our object was but to subdue the country that borders the Atlantic; on the present occasion there is an empire to overrun of which that might be a province.

And what can the invaders effect that we failed to accomplish? We defeated the opposing force in every battle in the open field. We took the principal cities, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond. The present invaders can hardly do more. And if so, why the failure of eventual success? Simply, because it was beyond our power to overcome this obstacle Victories were barren of result, for troops that will disperse into woods can just as readily re-assemble. The process becomes one of endless repetition, cutting off the head of a polypus that grows at once a new one in another place. To take prisoners was to be encumbered with so many units of a multitude; to carry a position was only a step in the journey towards another. And if there be those who demur to the facts, and recall

of space.

Saratoga and Yorktown, it will be found on examination that both those cases confirm the views expressed.

Burgoyne, a man of good military capacity, invaded the State of New York from Canada. Capturing Crown Point and Ticonderoga, his advance was a continuous triumph. Washington with his army was remote from the scene of action, and no opposing force was capable of effective resistance. But as he advanced step by step, his strength diminished every day. The country was all but in a state of nature; he had to cut his way through forests, to build bridges over streams, to make roads across swamps; there were no resources to enable war to support war; stores had to be transported from a distance at enormous toil and cost. Whilst this was in progress the hostile militia was converging from all quarters. He had cut his way through the woods and swamps to the vicinity of Saratoga, where in the midst of inclement weather, with provisions exhausted and his troops prostrated with fatigue, he found himself surrounded by these multitudes of militia, and all supplies intercepted. He resolved to treat rather than starve, or fall back to perish in detail; and a convention was signed, under which his force was to proceed to Boston and thence to England. We sent transports for the men, but they returned without them. Congress gave to the people the first lesson in repudiation: they were detained as prisoners throughout the war.

The disaster of Yorktown resulted from similar

causes.

Cornwallis opened the campaign with one unchequered course of success. He overthrew all that opposed him in both the Carolinas, and proceeded onward into Virginia. Here, like Burgoyne, he was surrounded-by Washington on the north, and the French under Rochambeau in the south, and eventually yielded to numbers. Both cases are thus striking illustrations of the danger of invading a country of vast extent, the people of which take active part in the hostilities; and show how a military force, though triumphant at the commencement of its progress, yet when thinned and exhausted by the effects of a campaign, may be surrounded by troops of inferior quality, and compelled either to starve or to surrender.

To all these dangers an army invading the Southern States will be exposed. It may advance full of ardour and hope, but in every skirmish there will be some diminution of its strength, every march will leave some stragglers behind; it grows weaker at every step, whilst plunging daily further into the midst of the enemy's strength. An army is a machine organized to fight an army, not to contend with a nation. The principle of its construction unfits it for this purpose. Its strength is that of concentration-when it ceases to be a compact body that strength is gone. But the people by whom it is opposed are diffused over a vast space, dispersed beyond its reach, and they close again over the pathway it has made

as the waters close over the furrow of a ship's keel.

The United States declared war with this country in 1813 ostensibly for the purpose of compelling the abrogation of the orders in council, really to take Canada, which all assumed to be an easy prey. The conquest of Canada, then peopled by a handful of men, was a small undertaking for the power of the Union when compared with that now attempted by part of it. Yet not only were all the invasions of that province miserably abortive, but repeated efforts failed even to penetrate the border of the country. Clear evidence appears in this, that forces organized like those of America, however efficient they may be in defence of their own soil, are altogether unequal to the invasion or conquest of another country, inhabited by men of the same race, and ready to defend it.

It remains to consider the means by which the people of the North propose to accomplish this difficult undertaking. The first measure carried into operation, the blockade, is one, as we have seen, entirely inefficacious as a means of subjugating a nation. The colonies of Spain, when they revolted, as well as our own, were all of them blockadedequally in vain. It will cause individual loss, and add to the difficulties of the Southern government; but the men who make revolutions are not those who shrink from difficulties. To the South, it will be injurious; to the North, disastrous in the end. It led at once to privateering in retaliation,

T