of so strange a fortress should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to make a sally,—­and that, contrary to all which has hitherto been seen in war, an infinitely inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost annihilated navy, ill-found and ill-manned, may with safety besiege this superior garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the place, merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack?  Indeed, indeed, my dear friend, I look upon this matter of our defensive system as much the most important of all considerations at this moment.  It has oppressed me with many anxious thoughts, which, more than any bodily distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know that I am.  Should it please Providence to restore to me even the late weak remains of my strength, I propose to make this matter the subject of a particular discussion.  I only mean here to argue, that the mode of conducting the war on our part, be it good or bad, has prevented even the common havoc of war in our population, and especially among that class whose duty and privilege of superiority it is to lead the way amidst the perils and slaughter of the field of battle.

The other causes which sometimes affect the numbers of the lower classes, but which I have shown not to have existed to any such degree during this war,—­penury, cold, hunger, nakedness,—­do not easily reach the higher orders of society.  I do not dread for them the slightest taste of these calamities from the distress and pressure of the war.  They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the rapines, the burnings, and the massacres that may follow in the train of a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph and dominion.  In the ordinary course of human affairs, any check to population among men in ease and opulence is less to be apprehended from what they may suffer than from what they enjoy.  Peace is more likely to be injurious to them in that respect than war.  The excesses of delicacy, repose, and satiety are as unfavorable as the extremes of hardship, toil, and want to the increase and multiplication of our kind.  Indeed, the abuse of the bounties of Nature, much more surely than any partial privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great command to man from the All-Gracious Giver of all,—­whose name be blessed, whether He gives or takes away!  His hand, in every page of His book, has written the lesson of moderation.  Our physical well-being, our moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all depend on that control of all our appetites and passions which the ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of temperance.

The only real question to our present purpose, with regard to the higher classes, is, How stands the account of their stock, as it consists in wealth of every description?  Have the burdens of the war compelled them to curtail any part of their former expenditure?—­which, I have before observed, affords the only standard of estimating property as an object of taxation.  Do they enjoy all the same conveniences, the same comforts, the same elegancies, the same luxuries, in the same or in as many different modes as they did before the war?