“It will be too late to speak of organizing and equipping your Militia when the enemy is thundering at your doors” [Valedictory letter of Lieut.-Colonel Lysons, C. B. Royal Artillery, to the people of Canada, 1862, on his leaving the Province after an effort rendered fruitless through Canadian parliamentary factions to organize and equip a Provincial Defensive force.] “What the Province is doing is worse than nothing, as yet. Her Majesty’s Government have furnished arms for an effective Provincial Militia, and what do we see? The arms after six months are still lying in boxes kicking about at railway depots, rusting and going to destruction. No armories provided.” [Extract of a letter from Lieut.-Colonel Lysons, C. B. Royal Artillery, after returning to Canada as Acting Quarter-master General of H. M. Forces, June 1863, addressed to Alexander Somerville, then Editor of the CANADIAN ILLUSTRATED NEWS, writer of CANADA A BATTLE GROUND, published May, 1862]. An enemy within the frontier line! Canada trodden by the foot of hostile forces vowing to be avenged on the peaceful, industrious people of British America, for the grievances of Ireland, accumulating through the long historic ranges of seven centuries. The land we live in invaded. Whatever may be the incentives to war growing out of the traditions of seven hundred years, there is no questionable sentiment, within the living community which hears the tread of the armed stranger within its borders. That is the aggression of to-day. What is the note of alarm? What is the signal? Who are the messengers to carry along the lake and river shores a thousand miles east and west, and north into the far interior, to citizens, artizans, husbandmen, and lumbermen, the intelligence, “Stand to your arms, an enemy is within the frontier; he has broken in on upper Niagara; he threatens to come in on lake and river shore, and all along the faintly defined line of Lower Canada!” Who is to carry this message, and diffuse it, proclaim it, be eloquent to enforce it?