The Invasion Year

BOOK IV

We are come to a new era in the history of nations; we are called to struggle for the destiny, not of this country alone but of the civilised world… We have for ourselves the great duty of self-preservation to perform; but the duty of the people of England now is of a nobler and higher order… Amid the wreck and the misery of nations it is our just exultation that we have continued superior to all that ambition or that despotism could effect; and our still higher exultation ought to be that we provide not only for our own safety but hold out a prospect for nations now bending under the iron yoke of tyranny of what the exertions of a free people can effect.