Not that they are exempt from contributing also by their personal service in the fleets and armies of their country.  They do contribute, and in their full and fair proportion, according to the relative proportion of their numbers in the community.  They contribute all the mind that actuates the whole machine.  The fortitude required of them is very different from the unthinking alacrity of the common soldier or common sailor in the face of danger and death:  it is not a passion, it is not an impulse, it is not a sentiment; it is a cool, steady, deliberate principle, always present, always equable,—­having no connection with anger,—­tempering honor with prudence,—­incited, invigorated, and sustained by a generous love of fame,—­informed, moderated, and directed by an enlarged knowledge of its own great public ends,—­flowing in one blended stream from the opposite sources of the heart and the head,—­carrying in itself its own commission, and proving its title to every other command by the first and most difficult command, that of the bosom in which it resides:  it is a fortitude which unites with the courage of the field the more exalted and refined courage of the council,—­which knows as well to retreat as to advance,—­which can conquer as well by delay as by the rapidity of a march or the impetuosity of an attack,—­which can be, with Fabius, the black cloud that lowers on the tops of the mountains, or, with Scipio, the thunderbolt of war,—­which, undismayed by false shame, can patiently endure the severest trial that a gallant spirit can undergo, in the taunts and provocations of the enemy, the suspicions, the cold respect, and “mouth honor” of those from whom it should meet a cheerful obedience,—­which, undisturbed by false humanity, can calmly assume that most awful moral responsibility of deciding when victory may be too dearly purchased by the loss of a single life, and when the safety and glory of their country may demand the certain sacrifice of thousands.  Different stations of command may call for different modifications of this fortitude, but the character ought to be the same in all.  And never, in the most “palmy state” of our martial renown, did it shine with brighter lustre than in the present sanguinary and ferocious hostilities, wherever the British arms have been carried.  But in this most arduous and momentous conflict, which from its nature should have roused us to new and unexampled efforts, I know not how it has been that we have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in ordinary wars.  In the fatal battles which have drenched the Continent with blood and shaken the system of Europe to pieces, we have never had any considerable army, of a magnitude to be compared to the least of those by which in former times we so gloriously asserted our place as protectors, not oppressors, at the head of the great commonwealth of Europe.  We have never manfully met the danger in front; and when the enemy, resigning to us our