natural dominion of the ocean, and abandoning the defence of his distant possessions to the infernal energy of the destroying principles which he had planted there for the subversion of the neighboring colonies, drove forth, by one sweeping law of unprecedented despotism, his armed multitudes on every side, to overwhelm the countries and states which had for centuries stood the firm barriers against the ambition of France, we drew back the arm of our military force, which had never been more than half raised to oppose him.  From that time we have been combating only with the other arm of our naval power,—­the right arm of England, I admit,—­but which struck almost unresisted, with blows that could never reach the heart of the hostile mischief.  From that time, without a single effort to regain those outworks which ever till now we so strenuously maintained, as the strong frontier of our own dignity and safety no less than the liberties of Europe,—­with but one feeble attempt to succor those brave, faithful, and numerous allies, whom, for the first time since the days of our Edwards and Henrys, we now have in the bosom of France itself,—­we have been intrenching and fortifying and garrisoning ourselves at home, we have been redoubling security on security to protect ourselves from invasion, which has now first become to us a serious object of alarm and terror.  Alas! the few of us who have protracted life in any measure near to the extreme limits of our short period have been condemned to see strange things,—­new systems of policy, new principles, and not only new men, but what might appear a new species of men.  I believe that any person who was of age to take a part in public affairs forty years ago (if the intermediate space of time were expunged from his memory) would hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest authority that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island, and that in the neighboring island there were at least fourscore thousand more.  But when he had recovered from his surprise on being told of this army, which has not its parallel, what must be his astonishment to be told again that this mighty force was kept up for the mere purpose of an inert and passive defence, and that in its far greater part it was disabled by its constitution and very essence from defending us against an enemy by any one preventive stroke or any one operation of active hostility?  What must his reflections be, on learning further, that a fleet of five hundred men of war, the best appointed, and to the full as ably commanded as this country ever had upon the sea, was for the greater part employed in carrying on the same system of unenterprising defence?  What must be the sentiments and feelings of one who remembers the former energy of England, when he is given to understand that these two islands, with their extensive and everywhere vulnerable coast, should be considered as a garrisoned sea-town?  What would such a man, what would any man think, if the garrison