A good opinion of ourselves is exceedingly necessary in private
life, but absolutely necessary in public life, and of the utmost
importance in supporting national character. I have no notion of
yielding the palm of the United States to any Grecians or Romans
that were ever born. We have equalled the bravest in times of
danger, and excelled the wisest in construction of civil governments.
From this agreeable eminence let us take a review of present
affairs. The spirit of corruption is so inseparably interwoven with
British politics, that their ministry suppose all mankind are governed
by the same motives. They have no idea of a people submitting even
to temporary inconvenience from an attachment to rights and
privileges. Their plans of business are calculated by the hour and for
the hour, and are uniform in nothing but the corruption which gives
them birth. They never had, neither have they at this time, any
regular plan for the conquest of America by arms. They know not how to
go about it, neither have they power to effect it if they did know.
The thing is not within the compass of human practicability, for
America is too extensive either to be fully conquered or passively
defended. But she may be actively defended by defeating or making
prisoners of the army that invades her. And this is the only system of
defence that can be effectual in a large country.
There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it
differ in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who
conducts it cannot tell whether the ground he gains be for him, or
against him, when he first obtains it.
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