Our duty is—­our aim ought to be—­to employ the true means of liberty and virtue for the ends of liberty and virtue.  In such policy, thoroughly understood, there is fitness and concord and rational subordination; it deserves a higher name—­organization, health, and grandeur.  Contrast, in a single instance, the two processes; and the qualifications which they require.  The ministers of that period found it an easy task to hire a band of Hessians, and to send it across the Atlantic, that they might assist in bringing the Americans (according to the phrase then prevalent) to reason.  The force, with which these troops would attack, was gross,—­tangible,—­and might be calculated; but the spirit of resistance, which their presence would create, was subtle—­ethereal—­mighty—­and incalculable.  Accordingly, from the moment when these foreigners landed—­men who had no interest, no business, in the quarrel, but what the wages of their master bound him to, and he imposed upon his miserable slaves;—­nay, from the first rumour of their destination, the success of the British was (as hath since been affirmed by judicious Americans) impossible.

The British government of the present day have been seduced, as we have seen, by the same commonplace facilities on the one side; and have been equally blind on the other.  A physical auxiliar force of thirty-five thousand men is to be added to the army of Spain:  but the moral energy, which thereby might be taken away from the principal, is overlooked or slighted; the material being too fine for their calculation.  What does it avail to graft a bough upon a tree; if this be done so ignorantly and rashly that the trunk, which can alone supply the sap by which the whole must flourish, receives a deadly wound?  Palpable effects of the Convention of Cintra, and self-contradicting consequences even in the matter especially aimed at, may be seen in the necessity which it entailed of leaving 8,000 British troops to protect Portugueze traitors from punishment by the laws of their country.  A still more serious and fatal contradiction lies in this—­that the English army was made an instrument of injustice, and was dishonoured, in order that it might be hurried forward to uphold a cause which could have no life but by justice and honour.  The Nation knows how that army languished in the heart of Spain:  that it accomplished nothing except its retreat, is sure:  what great service it might have performed, if it had moved from a different impulse, we have shewn.

It surely then behoves those who are in authority—­to look to the state of their own minds.  There is indeed an inherent impossibility that they should be equal to the arduous duties which have devolved upon them:  but it is not unreasonable to hope that something higher might be aimed at; and that the People might see, upon great occasions,—­in the practice of its Rulers—­a more adequate reflection of its own wisdom and virtue.  Our Rulers, I repeat, must begin with their own minds.  This is a precept of immediate urgency; and, if attended to, might be productive of immediate good.  I will follow it with further conclusions directly referring to future conduct.