Of this you are the best judge.
Burr is in London, and is giving out to his friends that that government
offers him two millions of dollars the moment he can raise an ensign of
rebellion as big as an handkerchief. Some of his partisans will believe
this, because they wish it. But those who know him best will not believe
it the more because he says it. For myself, even in his most flattering
periods of the conspiracy, I never entertained one moment's fear. My
long and intimate knowledge of my countrymen satisfied and satisfies me,
that, let there ever be occasion to display the banners of the law,
and the world will see how few and pitiful are those who shall array
themselves in opposition. I as little fear foreign invasion. I have
indeed thought it a duty to be prepared to meet even the most powerful,
that of a Bonaparte, for instance, by the only means competent, that of
a classification of the militia, and placing the junior classes at the
public disposal: but the lesson he receives in Spain extirpates all
apprehensions from my mind. If, in a peninsula, the neck of which is
adjacent to him, and at his command, where he can march any army without
the possibility of interception or obstruction from any foreign power,
he finds it necessary to begin with an army of three hundred thousand
men, to subdue a nation of five millions, brutalized by ignorance, and
enervated by long peace, and should find constant reinforcements of
thousands after thousands necessary to effect at last a conquest as
doubtful as deprecated, what numbers would be necessary against eight
millions of free Americans, spread over such an extent of country
as would wear him down by mere marching, by want of food, autumnal
diseases, &c.
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