Those who embark in projects of this description should be made to understand, or to act as if they understood, that having once drawn the sword they must not return it, till they shall have completely accomplished their object.  They must be prepared, and must be forced, to make all sacrifices to the cause.  Submission to military discipline and order is a matter of course; but when a nation determines to resist the authority, and to shake off the government of Buonaparte, they must be prepared and forced to sacrifice the luxuries and comforts of life, and to risk all in a contest, which it should be clearly understood before it is undertaken, has for its object to save all or nothing.

The first measure for a country to adopt is to form an army, and to raise a revenue from the people to defray the expense of the army:  above all, to form a government of such strength, as that army and people can be forced by it to perform their duty.  This is the rock upon which Spain has split; and all our measures in any other country which should afford hopes of resistance to Buonaparte should be directed to avoid it.  The enthusiasm of the people is very fine, and looks well in print; but I have never known it to produce any thing but confusion.  In France, what was called enthusiasm was power and tyranny, acting through the medium of popular societies, which have ended by overturning Europe, and in establishing the most powerful and dreadful tyranny that ever existed.  In Spain, the enthusiasm of the people spent itself in vivas and vain boasting.  The notion of its existence prevented even the attempt to discipline the armies; and its existence has been alleged, ever since, as the excuse for the rank ignorance of the officers and the indiscipline and constant misbehaviour of the troops.

I therefore earnestly recommend you, wherever you go, to trust nothing to the enthusiasm of the people.  Give them a strong and a just, and, if possible, a good government; but, above all, a strong one, which shall enforce upon them to do their duty by themselves and their country; and let measures of finance to support an army go hand in hand with measures to raise it.

I am quite certain that the finances of Great Britain are more than a match for Buonaparte, and that we shall have the means of aiding any country that may be disposed to resist his tyranny.  But those means are necessarily limited in every country by the difficulty of procuring specie.  This necessary article can be obtained in sufficient quantities only by the contributions of the people; and although Great Britain can and ought to assist with money, as well as in other modes, every effort of this description, the principal financial as well as military effort, ought to be by the people of the resisting country.

Dec. 10, 1811.

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The French System of Predatory War.