Two facts are significant in connection with this specious estimate of the British army. If the drain of this forcible conscription upon the industry of Hesse-Cassel and Hanau had been applied to England and Wales, at that date, it would have raised an army of four hundred thousand men; and yet, Britain did not venture to draw from her own subjects, at home, for the defence of her own Crown. Washington rightly conceived that the whole scheme would divide the sentiment of the British people, and that the success even of these mercenary troops, against their own blood in America, would prove no source of pride or congratulation. It was his intense love of English liberty, exhibited in its history, that undergirded his soul with sustaining faith in American liberty; and he read the hearts of the English people aright. He did not wait long for its echo. The Duke of Richmond used this emphatic and prophetic utterance: “An army of foreigners is now to be introduced into the British dominion; not to protect them from invasion, not to deliver them from the ravages of a hostile army, but to assist one-half of the inhabitants in massacring the other. Unprovided with a sufficient number of troops for the cruel purpose; or, unable to prevail upon the natives of the country [England] to lend their hands to such a sanguinary business, Ministers have applied to those foreign princes who trade in human blood, and have hired mercenaries for the work of destruction.” His closing sentence foreshadowed the alliance of America with Louis XVI., of France. It reads thus: “The Colonies themselves, after our example, will apply to strangers for assistance.” This British army was designed for four distinct, and as nearly as possible, concurrent, operations: one through Canada, down the Hudson River to Albany and New York, with divergent pressure upon New England and central New York; one to occupy Newport, R.I.; the third to control New York City and its related territory in New Jersey; and the fourth against representative centres at the South. Reference has been made to the anxiety expressed by Washington as early as February, 1776, lest the siege of Boston might be protracted until Britain could invade the other colonies, particularly New York, with an overwhelming retentive force. As a fact, only surmised and not known by him for weeks, Sir Peter Parker and Earl Cornwallis were ready to start from Cork, Ireland, by the twentieth of January; but did not sail until the thirteenth of February, and then the transports and ships were so buffeted by storms, and driven back for refitting, as not to reach Wilmington, N.C., until the third day of May. Here, as before indicated, he was joined by General Clinton, and both had the suggestive lesson of American courage in their repulse by the brave Moultrie, at Charleston, on the twenty-eighth of June. And now we are to consider Washington’s reception of the most formidable of these expeditions.