We now come to the war of 1812. In the beginning of this war the number of British regulars in the Canadas did not exceed three thousand men, who were scattered along a frontier of more than nine hundred miles in extent. In the whole of Upper Canada there were but seven hundred and twenty men, and at Montreal, Three Rivers, and on the whole line of the Sorel the whole defensive force amounted to only thirteen hundred and thirty men, and the garrison of Quebec was so small, that no detachment could be made without great inconvenience and danger. The fortifications of Isle aux Noix, then emphatically the key of central Canada, was without a garrison during nearly the whole of the first campaign. Under these circumstances an American force of fifteen hundred or two thousand men marching rapidly from Albany, might readily have broken the enemy's line of defence, and cut off all Upper Canada from supplies and reinforcements from England by way of Quebec. Let us see what course was pursued. On the 1st of June an army of two thousand men was collected at Dayton, in Ohio, placed under the command of an imbecile old officer of the Revolution, and directed by Detroit against the Canadian Peninsula. The dilatory march, absurd movements, and traitorous surrender of Hull's army to a British force of three hundred regulars and four hundred militia, are but too well known. Another American army of about ten thousand men was afterwards raised in the west; the main division of this army under Harrison marched by three separate routes to invade Canada by way of Malden; but they failed to reach their destination, and wintered behind the river Portage. The Eastern army was collected at Albany in the early part of the summer and placed under the command of General Dearborn, another old officer of the Revolution. Instead of pushing this force rapidly forward upon the strategic line of Lake Champlain, the general was directed to divide it into three parts, and to send one division against the Niagara frontier, a _second_ against Kingston, and a _third_ against Montreal. These orders were dispatched from Washington the 26th of June, nearly a month after Hull had begun his march from Dayton. Dearborn's army, on the first of September, consisted of six thousand five hundred regulars and seven thousand militia--thirteen thousand five hundred in all: six thousand three hundred for the Niagara frontier, two thousand two hundred at Sacketts Harbor, and five thousand for Lake Champlain. Even with this absurd plan of campaign and faulty division of the forces, we might have succeeded if the general had acted with energy, so exceedingly weak were the Canadian means of defence; but instead of taking advantage of his superiority in numbers and the favorable circumstances of the time, he entered into an armistice with the British general, and his whole army of thirteen thousand five hundred men lay inactive till the 13th of