fatal temerity to depend upon it, and neglect the necessary preparation. What should be done? Where lies the most obvious, the most unquestionable, and cheapest means of defence to the country? These are questions to which the memorialists undertook respectively to respond. He did not, of course, propose at this time particularly to examine the report of the board of officers, to which he had before adverted, but he would take the liberty to remark, that the positions assumed were much more questionable than the ability with which they were discussed and defended. There was at least one point of agreement between the memorialists, and one in which he thought both were right. It was as to the entire insufficiency of land or stationary defences to protect our harbors, and secure the approaches to them. That this had been fully illustrated in more than one instance, even when wind and sails had been relied upon, he might safely assert, without intending to discuss the relative power of floating and stationary batteries. How much less the security now, with the general and free application of the propelling power of steam, it required no particular science, or military knowledge to judge. He referred particularly to the passing of the castle of Crohenburgh, and the successful attack of Lord Nelson upon Copenhagen in 1801, to the attack upon Gibraltar by the French and Spanish in 1782, and the assault upon Vera Cruz, and the reduction of the strong castle of San Juan de Ulloa, a year ago last November, all of which had been cited on both sides in the controversy between floating and stationary defences. Gentlemen would be more safe in reading the official and authentic accounts, and drawing their own conclusions, than in trusting to the statements of the supporters of the one system or the other. Mr. P. said he would by no means dispense with the stationary fortifications, upon which he had so much relied; in many positions they were indispensable, but, in his judgment, the system, with us, had already been carried too far in respect to the number of works, and in some instances, as to the vast expense incurred upon individual works. Our country was too broadtoo immense in its sweep, to rely upon such works. No man would be so visionary as to indulge the chimerical scheme of making a sea-coast of more than 3,000 miles impervious to attack. There were not only a great number of harbors and road-steads along the coast that could not be thus defended, but almost innumerable indentations, affording safe anchorage, from which a superior naval force might land any number of troops, notwithstanding the entire completion of the most extensive plan of stationary fortifications ever yet dreamed of. They could not be compelled to land under the guns of a battery, or to place themselves within its range. Unless they should be met successfully upon their chosen element, they would take their own time, and pretty much their own place, to disembark. The contest then would be in the open field, between our armies and theirs generally between the steadiness and thorough discipline of their veteran, but mercenary regiments upon a foreign soil; and the valor and desperate energy of ours, fighting, it might be, within sight of their own homes. That we were now sadly deficient in the means of defence, was a fact admitted by all. In that condition we ought not to remain. We should provide our harbors, that hold out the greatest temptation to an invading foe, in addition to the stationary fortifications, with the best floating defences known to the world. We should make, as soon as it can be done consistently with other demands upon the revenue, our navy equal at least to one-sixth of that of Great Britain. We should never go for conquest. We had, in territory, in climate, and resources, all that any people should desire, and the armament alluded to was believed to be as large a proportion as England would ever be able to spare from other points, and detach to our seas. Consistently with the demands upon the revenue! He would not say that. He held that, with the wealth and great resources of the country, we should make our revenue equal to this demand. Want of funds should hereafter be regarded as no good excuse for neglecting defences, universally admitted to be indispensable for the honor and safety of our country. If the current revenue was not sufficient for these and other objects of like magnitude and necessity, let arti E cles of luxury and ornament, such as wines and silks, which are annually imported and consumed in the country, be taxed to raise the means. The navy of Great Britain consists at present of five hundred and fifteen ships and twenty-three steamers, and mounted more than twenty-two thousand guns; France, two hundred and thirty ships; America, fifty-two in all, and thirty-eight effective, mounting only three thousand guns. Now the least with which we should be satisfied in our naval armament, was an increase at the lowest of fifty per cent. In the mean time, we should provide for an organization of the militia, to be efficient and uniform throughout the United States. Thus prepared, with our large cities in a suitable state of defence, and with six hundred thousand disciplined citizen soldiers, so enrolled and organized as to admit of being promptly mustered and called into the field, we should be ready for that which, under such circumstances, would hardly be pressed upon us. He would not be understood as admitting, for a moment, that we would not, even unprepared as we now were, expel in a little time any invader that should venture to set foot upon our soil. He entertained not a doubt of it, because the same spirit that in 1793 prompted the celebrated decree of the French convention, which proclaimed that— "From the present moment, till that when all the enemies shall have been driven from the territory of the Republic, all Frenchmen shall be in permanent readiness for the service of the armies; the young men shall march to the contest; the married men forge arms and transport the provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes, and wait in the hospitals; the children shall make lint of old linen; the old men shall cause themselves to be carried to the public squares to excite the courage of the warriors, and preach hatred against the enemies of the Republic; the battalions, which shall be organized in every district shall be ranged under a banner with this inscription: 'The French nation risen against tyrants."" The spirit which rendered that people invincible, and crowned their arms with such a succession of splendid victories over the veteran troops of the allied powers as astounded the civilized world, would animate our Countrymen from one extremity of the Union to the other; but let every man consider what dreadful sacrifices must precede the final result, if war come upon us in our present defenceless state. While our citizens were taking their places under the fold of the banner which the Republic would throw over them—a slow process at least for want of organization-our gallant little army, to which the country looked with pride and confidence, would be sacrificed; the blood of our most valuable citizens would perhaps stain the pavements of their own streets; and more property be destroyed in one commercial city than would now defray the entire |