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in their horrid procedure. They prepared themselves for the work of murder among surrounding nations, by a self-baptism in the blood of the best citizens of their own. Yes, even "the public streets (of Paris) were so inundated with blood as to become impassable; and it became necessary to change the place of execution!"* Chateaubriand himself has seen some of those modern cannibals with a piece of an adversary's heart dangling as a medal at the button-hole! But I need not remind your Grace, that the honour or the infamy of producing such a class of men was not peculiar to France. The race is as old as war itself. It is long since Tyrtæus taught the Spartans to sing, that

"The man's unfit for war that cannot view,
With eye serene, the tide of human blood,
Yet burn to wreak his vengeance on the foe!"

The character of the work generally determines that of the operator, while they act reciprocally on each other. Now your Grace emphatically declares that the British army is "composed of the bad only."-In your "memorandum on the proposed plan for altering the discipline of the army," I find the following lamentable, but most truthful declaration:-"The man who enlists into the British army is, in general, the most drunken, and probably the worst man of the trade or profession to which he belongs, or of the village or town in which he lives. There is not one in a hundred of them, who, when enlisted, ought not to be put in the second or degraded class of any society or body into which they may be introduced." Again, in the evidence of your

* On Revolution, p. 50.

Grace, given "before the Royal Commission for inquiring into military punishments," you declare that "the British soldiers are taken entirely from the lowest orders of society," and that drunkenness is "the great parent of all crime" among them. Your Grace further declares, that so sunk and brutalized are they, that "there is no punishment which makes an impression upon any body except corporal punishment." Such is the British army! What must be the nature of war, the employment that such men prefer, and which such men alone can be found to perform? I say such men alone, for it is clearly brought out by your Grace's evidence, already referred to, that the choice is, such materials or none, ruffians or nobody! You frankly and positively declared that you knew of "no mode by which a better class of persons might be induced to enter into the army, under the present mode of voluntary enlistment." Your Grace declares that, even "if corporal punishments were abolished, and certain civil privileges given to such as had served in the army," you do not think it would "have the effect of producing a better class of persons in the army." No man who knows the true character of British society will dispute the accuracy of your conclusion. Your Grace, so early as 1809, had discovered that the English were not "a military people;" that "the whole business of an army upon service is foreign to their habits, and is a constraint upon them." In the memorandum aforesaid, you also declare that "the British army is an exotic in England-unknown to the old constitution of the country;-disliked by the inhabitants, particularly by the higher orders, some of whom never allow one of their family to serve in it;" and that "even the common people will make an exer

tion to find means to purchase the discharge of a relative who may have enlisted." To all this needs only be added the honest testimony of your Grace in your letter of August, 1815, to Lord Castlereagh, that all the powers of Europe have been "weakened by the wars in which they have been engaged with France," and that these wars have issued in "the ruin of the finances of all the continental powers," while you elsewhere denounce Napoleon as the chief promoter of the said wars, and the "insatiable enemy of mankind."

Such is your Grace's evidence concerning the allimportant subject of war. It is not too much to affirm that such evidence from such a witness, on such a subject, is sufficient, even singly and unsupported, incontrovertibly to establish the points for which I adduce it. Your Grace has pronounced a final sentence of condemnation against all wars of aggression. You are the avowed friend of perpetual peace. You readily concur in the judgment of Ulysses, that-

"The bravest soon are satiate of the field;

Though vast the heaps that strew the crimson plain,
The bloody harvest brings but little gain !"

You, my Lord Duke, have never incurred the guilt and the infamy of declaring yourself " a lover of honourable war!" He who could thus do violence to the very first principles of humanity, had never seen actual war. He knew nothing of it except by report. Had he shared in the awful experience of your Grace, words so execrable would never have been allowed to pass his lips. Honourable war! If ever a war was honourable, it was that which Europe waged against Napoleon, which, nevertheless, you truly affirm, has "weakened

the nations," and "ruined their finances," and which, all men know, brought upon England a burden under which she groans through all her borders,-a burden from which she can never be delivered,—a burden which, perhaps, at a day not exceedingly remote, may completely crush her, and, with her, those institutions which have been the boast of ages, the admiration of all lands, the sanctuary of law, justice, liberty, and religion! Lives there now a man who dares, in the face of England, proclaim himself a lover of such wars?

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Military enterprise, in its least offensive forms, and in its least repulsive aspect, is a dreadful occupation! If a wise and good man can at all engage in it, even defensively, he can do so only in obedience to a hard and cruel necessity. Such a man would greatly rejoice to see the nations of the earth raised to such a height of civilization, and filled with such a sense of humanity and justice, that by joint consent, wars should for ever cease. Your glory mainly consists in having, as instrument in the hand of God, given peace to a distracted and afflicted continent; and great, exceeding great, is the honour of such an achievement. But the death, the crime, the ruin, and all the calamity survived! Your armies arrested the progress of the evil, but made no reparation for the past. Let me suppose, then, that in Europe another great spirit should arise, whose wisdom and commanding moral power would enable him to guarantee, in all future time, the perfect peace of its nations; with what reverence and admiration would such a man be viewed by the friends of humanity! But if this work, instead of being accomplished by one, should be effected by a multitude: then, ought not those feelings and affections to be transferred to that multitude?

Now such men actually exist; they live and labour in divers parts of the world; they have already done much to promote peace on earth and good-will among men. I proceed to institute a comparison between their enterprise and that of the soldier.

Among all conquerors, I have read of none who demands a tithe of the respect which I feel for your Grace. But truth compels me to say, that, although I view you as the prince of captains, I am constrained to look upon you as immeasurably less than the least of all missionaries. Oh! how high and holy is their vocation as compared with that which occupied the first half of your eventful life! With them eternity is every thing; with your Grace, it appeared in those days to be nothing. They walk daily and hourly with God; from all that I can discover of your Grace's views, from your volumes, written during your warlike operations, God was not in all your thoughts! I can find no difference of creed, between your Grace and Napoleon, with respect to a future world and the hope of man; nor can I find any thing, in which either he or your Grace differs from Alexander or Cæsar, who dwelt in the darkness of idolatry. The letters of condolence which you wrote from fields of battle to the friends of those who fell at your side, are most affecting proofs and illustrations. The considerations, for example, which you employ to console the friends of Colonel Lake, are that he fell the admiration of the whole army," and "in the achievement of one of the most heroic actions." In the case of Colonel Cameron, you endeavour to comfort his father with the thought, that "he fell in the performance of his duty." You labour to soothe Lord Somers on the death of his son, with the assurance that

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