They show the superiority of their opponents, like other
troops, by retreating before them, and forming one fortification behind
another, in hopes of wearying those whom they cannot hope to repulse.
Of this conduct we have had already an instance in the present debate; a
debate managed with such vigour, order, and resolution, as sufficiently
shows the advantage of regular discipline long continued, and proves,
that troops may retain their skill and spirit, even when they are
deprived of that leader, to whose instructions and example they were
indebted for them. When first this motion was offered, it seems to have
been their chief hope to divert us from it by outcries of impossibility,
by representing it as the demand of men unacquainted with the state of
our offices, or the multiplicity of transactions, in which the
indefatigable industry of our ministers has been employed; and they have
therefore endeavoured to persuade us, that they are only discouraging us
from an insuperable labour, and advising us to desist from measures
which we cannot live to accomplish.
But when they found, sir, that their exaggerations produced merriment
instead of terrour, that their opponents were determined to try their
strength against impossibility, that they were resolved to launch out
into this boundless ocean of inquiry; an ocean of which they have been
boldly told, that it has neither shore nor bottom, and that whoever
ventures into it must be tost about for life; when they discovered that
this was not able to shake our resolution, or move us to any other
disposition, they thought it proper to explain away their assertion of
impossibility, by making a kind of distinction between things
impossible, and things which cannot be performed; and finding it
necessary to enlarge their plea, they have now asserted, that this
inquiry is both impossible and inexpedient.
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