garrisons, had assembled at a single point within sight of our
coast. To trust to our fleet was to trust to the winds and the
waves. The breeze which was favourable to the invader might
prevent our men of war from standing out to sea. Only nine years
ago this had actually happened. The Protestant wind, before which
the Dutch armament had run full sail down the Channel, had driven
King James's navy back into the Thames. It must then be
acknowledged to be not improbable that the enemy might land. And,
if he landed, what would he find? An open country; a rich
country; provisions everywhere; not a river but which could be
forded; no natural fastnesses such as protect the fertile plains
of Italy; no artificial fastnesses such as, at every step, impede
the progress of a conqueror in the Netherlands. Every thing must
then be staked on the steadiness of the militia; and it was
pernicious flattery to represent the militia as equal to a
conflict in the field with veterans whose whole life had been a
preparation for the day of battle. The instances which it was the
fashion to cite of the great achievements of soldiers taken from
the threshing floor and the shopboard were fit only for a
schoolboy's theme. Somers, who had studied ancient literature
like a man,--a rare thing in his time,--said that those instances
refuted the doctrine which they were meant to prove. He disposed
of much idle declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying, most
concisely, correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian
commonwealth really was a standing army which threatened all the
rest of Greece. In fact, the Spartan had no calling except war.
Of arts, sciences and letters he was ignorant. The labour of the
spade and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he
contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His whole
existence from childhood to old age was one long military