ventures. In
these adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a
cemetery to conquer. In carrying on the war in the West Indies, the
hostile sword is merciful; the country in which we engage is the
dreadful enemy. There the European conqueror finds a cruel defeat in
the very fruits of his success. Every advantage is but a new demand on
England for recruits to the West Indian grave. In a West India war,
the regicides have, for their troops, a race of fierce barbarians, to
whom the poisoned air, in which our youth inhale certain death, is
salubrity and life. To them the climate is the surest and most
faithful of allies.

Had we carried on the war on the side of France which looks towards
the Channel or the Atlantic, we should have attacked our enemy on his
weak and unarmed side. We should not have to reckon on the loss of a
man who did not fall in battle. We should have an ally in the heart
of the country, who, to our hundred thousand, would at one time have
added eighty thousand men at the least, and all animated by principle,
by enthusiasm, and by vengeance; motives which secured them to the
cause in a very different manner from some of those allies whom we
subsidised with millions. This ally, (or rather this principal in the
war,) by the confession of the regicide himself, was more formidable
to him than all his other foes united. Warring there, we should have
led our arms to the capital of Wrong. Defeated, we could not fail
(proper precautions taken) of a sure retreat. Stationary, and only
supporting the royalists, an impenetrable barrier, an impregnable
rampart, would have been formed between the enemy and his naval power.
We are probably the only nation who have declined to act against an
enemy, when it might have been done in his own country; and who having
an armed, a powerful, and a long-victorious ally in that country,
declined all effectual co-operation, and suffered him to perish for
want of support. On the plan of a war in France, every advantage that
our allies might obtain would be doubled in its effect. Disasters on
the one side might have a fair chance of being compensated by
victories on the other. Had we brought the main of our force to bear
upon that quarter, all the operations of the British and Imperial
crowns would have been combined. The war would have had system,
correspondence, and a certain direction. But as the war has been
pursued, the operations of the two crowns have not the smal