This increased violence is best explained by the two important
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.
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