I dare say, before this time you have interpreted the Northern Storm. If
the presages chilled your blood, how must you be frozen and stiffened at
the disgrace brought upon our arms! unless some warmer passion seize
you, and anger and resentment fire your breast. How are all our vast
magazines of cannon, powder, arms, clothing, provision, medicine, etc.,
to be restored to us?[176] But, what is vastly more, how shall the
disgrace be wiped away? How shall our lost honor be retrieved? The
reports with regard to that fortress are very vague and uncertain. Some
write from thence that there was not force sufficient to defend it.
Others say it might have stood a long siege. Some there are who ought to
know why and wherefore we have given away a place of such importance.
That the inquiry will be made, I make no doubt; and if cowardice, guilt,
deceit, are found upon any one, howsoever high or exalted his station,
may shame, reproach, infamy, hatred, and the execrations of the public
be his portion.
I would not be so narrow-minded as to suppose that there are not many
men of all nations, possessed of honor, virtue, and integrity; yet it is
to be lamented that we have not men among ourselves sufficiently
qualified for war to take upon them the most important command.
It was customary among the Carthaginians to have a military school, in
which the flower of their nobility, and those whose talents and ambition
prompted them to aspire to the first dignities, learned the art of war.
From among these they selected all their general officers; for, though
they employed mercenary soldiers, they were too jealous and suspicious
to employ foreign generals. Will a foreigner, whose interest is not
naturally connected with ours (any otherwise than as the cause of
liberty is the cause of all mankind), will he act with the same zeal, or
expose himself to equal dangers with the same resolution, for a republic
of which he is not a member, as he would have done for his own native
country? And can the people repose an equal confidence in them, even
supposing them men of integrity and abilities, and that they meet with
success equal to their abilities? How much envy and malice are employed
against them! And how galling to pride, how mortifying to human nature,
to see itself excelled.