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 were 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 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 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

army

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 relinquishment of the right of search, 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.

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

which, if the war continue long, may become an intolerable nuisance to Northern trade. It stops the supply of cotton to the Northern mills, and will soon paralyze the most important branch of their own industry. And in the end it will probably lead to the interference of European powers whom it might have been far wiser to leave in the position of disinterested parties.

But although this use of its naval power appears as unwise as we hold it to be unconstitutional, there are other directions in which it may be employed with effect. It enables the North to threaten every point on the coast, and to compel the defenders to maintain a force at each of them. Five thousand men threatening any one of ten points, and compelling but two thousand to be maintained at each, will thus neutralize four times its own number. Where numbers are so large, this loses much of its importance, but there remains the power of actual attack by naval expeditions. At first view this would appear very practicable; on closer examination, such operations will be found full of difficulty and danger. The coast of the Southern States is remarkably bare of harbours. The whole of these of any importance are defended by fortifications, generally believed last year to insure their safety against any possible attack; if these defences were impregnable then, they should be equally so now. Naval expeditions in summer would land the troops in a climate fatal enough without other foe; and this is so well known, that

such operations must of necessity be confined to the winter season, when transports crowded with troops must be exposed to disastrous losses upon a coast so dangerous at that period of the year.

Assuming these hazards to be surmounted, and a landing effected on some point of the coast, the expeditionary force would then be placed thus. It will consist of numbers insufficient to act with power as an independent army, for we know what is required to transport 30,000 men even over a smooth sea, from Varna to Eupatoria. On its appearance off the coast, telegraphic messages would flash over the South, and every railway would hurry down the militia of the neighbouring States. To these would be added the Confederate troops directed to the spot, and before the invading force, after establishing a depôt, could make its first inland march, it would be faced by an enemy superior in numbers, in possession of all the positions of defence, and growing in strength every hour.

It cannot be difficult for the Northern power to equip expeditions of this kind at New York, and to capture with them several of the small harbours in the Southern States, such as Fernandina, Brunswick, St. Augustine. To what effectual result? Were we at war with France, and had they possession of the seas, it would not be difficult for them to capture Whitehaven, once attacked by Paul Jones, or to take possession of Bantry Bay as they did before. How far would such opera