“New complications may occur between Britain and France, as well as between Canada and America. A recurrence of excitement about French invasion may any day arise with still deeper perplexities than at any time before. The Legislative Chamber at Paris has just been told by a noble member, a legitimist, not a Napoleonist, and so much the worse, that the thirteen hundred millions of francs, spent on the Crimean war would have carried the French army to London. The British uneasiness of 1858 ripened public sentiment in favour of an auxiliary army of volunteers. Other ‘tyrannicide’ pamphlets, as atrocious as that of 1858, may issue from London and inflame France. Again, the ‘French Colonels’ may demand permission of the Emperor, as in that year, to ‘hunt conspirators in their London dens.’ “In that hypothesis of complex difficulties, the Engineers and Guards, the Royal Artillery and regiments of the British Line, grandly efficient in quality, but inadequate in number even now, may be recalled to save the venerated soil of Britain from the track of invasion. But should they remain, as pray Heaven they may have no cause to go away nor any employment here; a mass levy of the male population will be an instant necessity in the event of war. The mass levy will be only a mob, yet indispensable, as a source from whence to draft selected levies, and to form working brigades to construct defences; to build Forts, for instance, beyond Toronto on the Yorkville side, and on the heights near Hamilton city, should Huron Lake and Georgian Bay be occupied by gun-boats and floating batteries from the arsenals at Chicago, and Green Bay; and Erie Lake, from docks and arsenals at Toledo and Buffalo. The sooner those Forts are raised after the enemy is at Georgian Bay, at Suspension Bridge, at Port Dover, Port Colborne and Port Dalhousie, the sounder may Toronto and Hamilton sleep in bed, if they can sleep at all. “Concentrated on one point, or distributed to distant places in obedience to the exigencies of strategy, the rural aggregations of the mass levy, and the rural regiments of militia, while defending towns and cities from hostile occupation and ravage, may be told of their own undefended homesteads laid in ashes; barns plundered and pastures cleared of cattle; women and children fleeing to the wilderness distracted, or dying on the cinders of the homes, in which they live happily this day, believing that none dare make them afraid. * * * * *