a physical power of about a million of men, capable of bearing arms, and ardently devoted to liberty, could not be subdued by an army of twenty-five thousand men. The wide extent of country over which we are spread, was another security. In other countries, France and England, for example, the fall of Paris or London, is the fall of the nation. Here are no such dangerous aggregations of people. New York, and Philadelphia, and Boston, and every city on the Atlantic, might be subdued by an usurper, and he would have made but a small advance in the accomplishment of his purpose. He would add a still more improbable supposition, that the country east of the Allegany, was to submit to the ambition of some daring chief, and he insisted that the liberty of the union would be still unconquered. It would find successful support from the west. We are not only in the situation just described, but a great portion of the militia-nearly the whole, he understood, of that of Massachusetts - have arms in their hands; and he trusted in God, that that great object would be persevered in, until every man in the nation could proudly shoulder the musket, which was to defend his country and himself. A people having, besides the benefit of one general government, other local governments in full operation, capable of exerting and commanding great portions of the physical power, all of which must be prostrated before our constitution is subverted. Such a people have nothing to fear from a petty contemptible force of twenty-five thousand regulars.

Mr. Clay proceeded, more particularly, to inquire into the object of the force. That object he understood distinctly to be war, and war with Great Britain. It had been supposed, by some gentlemen, improper to discuss publicly so delicate a question. He did not feel the impropriety. It was a subject in its nature incapable of concealment. Even in countries where the powers of government were conducted by a single ruler, it was almost impossible for that ruler to conceal his intentions when he meditates war. The assembling of armies, the strengthening of posts; all the movements preparatory to war, and which it is impossible to disguise, unfolded the intentions of the sovereign. Does Russia or France intend war, the intention is almost invariably known before the war is commenced. If congress were to pass a law, with closed doors, for raising an army for the purpose of war, its enlistment and organization, which could not be done in secret, would indicate the use to which it was to be applied; and we cannot suppose England would be so blind, as not to see that she was aimed at. Nor could she, did she apprehend, injure us more by thus knowing our purposes, than if she were kept in ignorance of them. She may, indeed, anticipate us, and commence the war. But that is what she is in fact doing, and she can add but little to the injury which she is inflicting. If she choose to declare war in form, let her do so, the responsibility will be with her