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were at first enlisted, that we found them at all qualified to meet in the field of battle those to whom they were opposed. The occasional brilliant and justly celebrated acts, of some of our militia, during that eventful period, detract nothing from this dear bought truth. With all the enthusiasm which mark those days, it was perceived and universally felt, that regular and disciplined the troops were indispensable and that it was utterly unsafe for us to trust to militia alone the issue of the war. The position therefore is illustrated, that even in times of the greatest danger, we cannot give to our militia, that degree of discipline, or to their officers the degree of military science upon which a nation nation may safely hazard its feet fate

The Great Man who conducted the war of our revolution, was continually compelled to conform his conduct to the circumstances growing out of the experimental lessons just mentioned. What was the secret of his conduct? Must it be told? It may, and without exciting a blush or uneasy sensation in any of his surviving companions in arms. He had an Army of Men, but he had few Officers or Soldiers in that army. Both were to be formed, which could not be affected in a single campaign, or while his regiments were continually returning home, and like the waves of the sea, each in their turn lost in the abyss and succeeded by new ones. It was not till after he was finished with a less fluctuating and more stable kind of force that he could commence with a prospective advantage, military instructions or inforce the ordnances of discipline: and even then he felt that time and instructors were required to render his labours useful and enable his army to meet the enemy upon any thing like equal terms. Are we to profit by or is this experience to be lost to our country?

The art of war, which gives to a small force the faculty to combat with advantage superior numbers, indifferently instructed, is subjected to mechanical, geometrical, moral and physical rules; it calls for profound study; its theory is immense; the details infinite, and its principles rendered useful only by a happy adaptation