On
that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars; that he
would bid to be brought forth from their hideous kennel (where his
scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of
war whose fierce regards affright even the minister of vengeance that
feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues,
and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit,
order, peace, religion, and virtue are alien and abhorrent. It was
expected that he would at last have thought of active and effectual war;
that he would no longer amuse the British lion in the chase of mice and
rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval power of Great
Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey upon the miserable
remains of a peddling commerce, which the enemy did not regard, and from
which none could profit. It was expected that he would have reasserted
the justice of his cause; that he would have reanimated whatever
remained to him of his allies, and endeavored to recover those whom
their fears had led astray; that he would have rekindled the martial
ardor of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example
of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French
ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which, if
this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false color of a
government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must
forever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most
ignominious slavery of body and mind.
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