ant
circumstances that the great contest in Europe for an equilibrium
guaranteeing all its States against the ambition of any has been closed
without any check on the overbearing power of Great Britain on the
ocean, and it has left in her hands disposable armaments, with which,
forgetting the difficulties of a remote war with a free people, and
yielding to the intoxication of success, with the example of a great
victim to it before her eyes, she cherishes hopes of still further
aggrandizing a power already formidable in its abuses to the
tranquillity of the civilized and commercial world.

But whatever may have inspired the enemy with these more violent
purposes, the public councils of a nation more able to maintain than it
was to acquire its independence, and with a devotion to it rendered more
ardent by the experience of its blessings, can never deliberate but
on the means most effectual for defeating the extravagant views or
unwarrantable passions with which alone the war can now be pursued
against us.

In the events of the present campaign the enemy, with all his augmented
means and wanton use of them, has little ground for exultation, unless
he can feel it in the success of his recent enterprises against this
metropolis and the neighboring town of Alexandria, from both of which
his retreats were as precipitate as his attempts were bold and
fortunate. In his other incursions on our Atlantic frontier his
progress, often checked and chastised by the martial spirit of the
neighboring citizens, has had more effect in distressing individuals
and in dishonoring his arms than in promoting any object of legitimate
warfare; and in the two instances mentioned, however deeply to be
regretted on our part, he will find in his transient success, which
interrupted for a moment only the ordinary public business at the seat
of Government, no compensation for the loss of character with the world
by his violations of private property and by his destruction of public
edifices protected as monuments of the arts by the laws of civilized
warfare.

On our side we can appeal to a series of achievements which have given
new luster to the American arms. Besides the brilliant incidents in the
minor operations of the campaign, the splendid victories gained on the
Canadian side of the Niagara by the American forces under Major-General
Brown and Brigadiers Scott and Gaines have gained for these heroes and
their emulating companions the most u