“You count the cost of war by the army and navy estimates, but who can ever count the cost of that war to us? A war, let it be borne in mind, into which we were precipitated without our knowledge or consent. Let the coasts of England be invaded by powerful armies for three summers in succession; let the whole Channel from Falmouth to the Nore be menaced, let Southampton be taken and burnt, let the South-downs be swept from the Hampshire hills, and the rich pastures of Devonshire supply fat beeves to the enemy encamped in the western counties, or marching on Manchester and London; let the youth of England be drawn from profitable labour to defend these great centres of industry, the extremities of the island being given up to rapine and to plunder; fancy the women of England living for three years with the sound of artillery occasionally in their ears, and the thoughts of something worse than death ever present to their imaginations; fancy the children of England, with wonder and alarm on their pretty faces, asking for three years when their fathers would come home; fancy, in fact, the wars of the Roses or the civil wars back again, and then you can understand what we suffered from 1812 to 1815. Talk of the cost of war at a distance; let your country be made its theatre, and then you will understand how unfair is your mode of calculation when you charge us with the army estimates, and give us no credit for what we have done and suffered in your wars. “Though involved in the war of 1812 by no interest or fault of our own; though our population was scattered, and our coasts and frontiers almost defenceless; the moment it came, we prepared for combat without a murmur. I am just old enough to remember that war. The commerce of the Maritime Provinces was not a twentieth part of what it is now, but what we had was almost annihilated. Our mariners, debarred from lawful trade, took to privateering, and made reprisals on the enemy. Our Liverpool ‘clippers’ fought some gallant actions, and did some service in those days. The war expenditure gave to Halifax an unhealthy excitement, but improvement was stopped in all other parts of the province; and, when peace came, the collapse was fearful even in that city. Ten years elapsed before it recovered from the derangement of industry, and the extravagant habits fostered by the war. “A few regiments were raised in the Maritime Provinces, their militia was organised, and some drafts from the interior were brought in to defend Halifax, whence the expeditions against the French Islands and the State of Maine were fitted out. Canada alone was invaded in force. “General Smith describes the conduct of the Canadian militia in the few but weighty words that become a sagacious military chieftain pronouncing a judgment on the facts of history.