The effects of these contributions may, perhaps, reach still further. Truth is best supported by virtue: we may hope, from those who feel, or who see, our charity, that they shall no longer detest, as heresy, that religion, which makes its professors the followers of him, who has commanded us to "do good to them that hate us."
ON THE BRAVERY OF THE ENGLISH COMMON SOLDIERS [28],
By those who have compared the military genius of the English with that of the French nation, it is remarked, that "the French officers will always lead, if the soldiers will follow;" and that "the English soldiers will always follow, if their officers will lead."
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness; and, in this comparison, our officers seem to lose what our soldiers gain. I know not any reason for supposing that the English officers are less willing than the French to lead; but it is, I think, universally allowed, that the English soldiers are more willing to follow. Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemick bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. We can show a peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns, whose courage may vie with that of their general.
There may be some pleasure in tracing the causes of this plebeian magnanimity. The qualities which, commonly, make an army formidable, are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander. Regularity may, in time, produce a kind of mechanical obedience to signals and commands, like that which the perverse cartesians impute to animals; discipline may impress such an awe upon the mind, that any danger shall be less dreaded, than the danger of punishment; and confidence in the wisdom, or fortune, of the general may induce the soldiers to follow him blindly to the most dangerous enterprise.
What may be done by discipline and regularity, may be seen in the troops of the Russian emperess, and Prussian monarch. We find, that they may be broken without confusion, and repulsed without flight.
But the English troops have none of these requisites, in any eminent degree. Regularity is, by no means, part of their character: they are rarely exercised, and, therefore, show very little dexterity in their evolutions, as bodies of men, or in the manual use of their weapons, as individuals; they neither are thought by others, nor by themselves, more active, or exact, than their enemies, and, therefore, derive none of their courage from such imaginary superiority.
The manner in which they are dispersed in quarters, over the country, during times of peace, naturally produces laxity of discipline: they are very little in sight of their officers; and, when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard, are suffered to live, every man his own way.
The equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures, and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence superiours. It is not to any great esteem of the officers, that the English soldier is indebted for his spirit in the hour of battle; for, perhaps, it does not often happen, that he thinks much better of his leader than of himself. The French count, who has lately published the Art of War, remarks, how much soldiers are animated, when they see all their dangers shared by those who were born to be their masters, and whom they consider, as beings of a different rank. The Englishman despises such motives of courage: he was born without a master; and looks not on any man, however dignified by lace or titles, as deriving, from nature, any claims to his respect, or inheriting any qualities superiour to his own.