Elements of Military Art and Science | Page 9

sneaking train of followers: now, they rely for respect and support upon the judgment of the honest and enlightened. Then, the rank and file of party were mere political hirelings, who sold their manhood for place, who reviled and glorified, and shouted huzzas and whispered calumnies, just as they were bidden; they could fawn upon those who dispensed political patronage with a cringing servility that would shame the courtiers of Louis XIV., or the parasites and hirelings of Walpole: now, all political partisans, deriving their moral tone from the piping times of peace, are pure, disinterested patriots, who, like the Roman farmer, take office with great reluctance, and resign it again as soon as the state can spare their services. Then, prize-fighters, and blacklegs, and gamblers, having formed themselves into political clubs, were courted by men high in authority, and rewarded for their dirty and corrupting partisan services by offices of trust and responsibility: now, no man clothed with authority would dare to insult the moral sense of community by receiving such characters in the national councils, or by bestowing public offices upon these corrupt and loathsome dregs of society.
Such, the advocates of non resistance would persuade us, are the legitimate results in this country of war on the one hand and of a long-protracted peace on the other. But there are men of less vivid imaginations, and, perhaps, of visions less distorted by fanatical zeal, who fail to perceive these results, and who even think they see the reverse of all this. These men cannot perceive any thing in the lives of Washington, Hamilton, and Knox, to show that they were the less virtuous because they had borne arms in their country's service: they even fail to perceive the injurious effects of the cultivation of a military spirit on the military students of West Point, whose graduates, they think, will compare favorably in moral character with the graduates of Yale and Cambridge. Nay, more, some even go so far as to say that our army, as a body, is no less moral than the corresponding classes in civil life; that our common soldiers are as seldom guilty of riots, thefts, robberies, and murders, as similarly educated men engaged in other pursuits; that our military officers are not inferior in moral character to our civil officers, and that, as a class, they will compare favorably with any other class of professional men--with lawyers, for example. In justification of these opinions--which may, perhaps, be deemed singularly erroneous--they say, that in the many millions of public money expended during the last forty years, by military officers, for the army, for military defences, and for internal improvements, but a single graduate of West Point has proved a defaulter, even to the smallest sum, and that it is exceedingly rare to see an officer of the army brought into court for violating the laws.
But even suppose it true that armies necessarily diffuse immorality through community, is it not equally true that habitual submission to the injustice, plunder, and insult of foreign conquerors would tend still more to degrade and demoralize any people?
With regard to "pecuniary expenditures" required in military defence, many absurd as well as false statements have been put forth. With respect to our own country, the entire amounts expended, under the head of war department, whether for Indian pensions, for the purchase of Indian lands, the construction of government roads, the improvement of rivers and harbors, the building of breakwaters and sea-walls, for the preservation of property, the surveying of public lands, &c., &c.; in fine, every expenditure made by officers of the army, under the war department, is put down as "expenses for military defence." Similar misstatements are made with respect to foreign countries: for example, the new fortifications of Paris are said to have already cost from fifty to seventy-five millions of dollars, and as much more is said to be required to complete them. Indeed, we have seen the whole estimated cost of those works stated at two hundred and forty millions of dollars, or twelve hundred millions of francs! The facts are these: the works, when done, will have cost about twenty-eight millions. We had the pleasure of examining them not long since, in company with several of the engineer officers employed on the works. They were then three-fourths done, and had cost about twenty millions. We were assured by these officers that the fortifications proper would be completed for somewhat less than the original estimate of twenty-eight millions. Had we time to enter into details, other examples of exaggeration and misrepresentation could be given.
But it is not to be denied that wars and the means of military defence have cost vast amounts of money. So also have litigation and the means deemed requisite for maintaining justice between