They Have Fortified Certain Important Points, And Those Important Points, Although The Rest Of The Country May Have Been Overrun, Have Resisted Attack - Some Of Them Even To This Day And Others For Three Or Four Years Of The Contest.

Look at Richmond; is Richmond taken?

Has not Richmond been attacked for a great length of time? And what are its defences? Why, chiefly earthworks, with a force behind them; and, though that force is inferior in numbers to the force which threatens it, it has hitherto remained in Confederate hands. The mere occupation of territory by an army that traverses through it without reducing its fortresses is no conquest. The conquest is limited to the ground that the invading army occupies, and when that army passes to another part of the country its conquest passes away with it. But all countries fortify particular points, and when those points are secure they trust that the general bulk of the territory is safe from any permanent occupation or conquest by any enemy who may attack it. It is urged that Canada has an extended frontier; but are no other States similarly placed in that respect? What country has the largest frontier? What is the extent of our own frontier? Why, the whole coast of the United Kingdom; and we might as well say that it would be necessary for the security of this country that we should line our whole coast with defensive works because we may be attacked at any point of that great and extensive frontier.

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