That there was no just cause for a declaration of war on the part of the United States, it may be sufficient to state that the news of the repeal of the obnoxious Order in Council, reached the United States before England was aware of the declaration of war. But the American government wanted a war as an excuse for a filibustering expedition to Canada, which was to be peaceably separated from Great Britain, and quietly annexed to the United States. Then existing differences would have been speedily patched up to the satisfaction of all parties, the Lower Canadians being, in the language of Sir James Craig, treasonable, seditious, and attached to the country with which the United States was in alliance, France. The United States were not prepared for war. While Great Britain had a hundred sail of the line in commission, and a thousand ships of war bore the royal flag, the Americans had only four frigates and eight sloops in commission, and their whole naval force afloat in ordinary, and building for the Ocean and the Canadian Lakes, was eight frigates and twelve sloops. Their military force only amounted to twenty-five thousand men, to be enlisted for the most part, but the President was authorised to call out one hundred thousand militia, for the purpose of defending the sea coast and the Canadian frontiers. The greatest want of all was proper officers. The ablest of the revolutionary heroes had paid the debt of nature, and there was no military officer to whom fame could point as the man fitted for command. With means so lamentably inconsiderable had America declared war against a country whose arms were sweeping from the Spanish Peninsula the disciplined and veteran troops of France. It was marvellous audacity. And it was a marvellous mistake. Canada, it is true, had only 5,454 men of all arms, who could be accounted soldiers, 445 artillery, 3,783 infantry of the line, and 1,226 fencibles. She had only one or two armed brigs and a few gun-boats on the lakes, but the Upper Canadians were not prepared to exchange their dependency on Great Britain for the paltry consideration of being erected into a territory of the United States, and the Superintendent of the Church of Rome, in Lower Canada, hardly thought it possible that a new conquest of Canada would make her peculiar institutions more secure than they were. The militia of both sections of Canada were loyal. They felt that they could, as their enemies had done before, at least defend their own firesides. There was no sympathy with the American character, nor any regard for American institutions then. Those feelings were to be brought about by that commercial selfishness which time was to develop.