To diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the
greater strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician.
It is true that some persons have been kicked into courage; and this
is no bad hint to give to those who are too forward and liberal in
bestowing insults and outrages on their passive companions. But such a
course does not at first view appear a well-chosen discipline to form
men to a nice sense of honour, or a quick resentment of injuries. A long
habit of humiliation does not seem a very good preparative to manly and
vigorous sentiment. It may not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the
mind fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not. Men low and
dispirited may regard those terms as not at all amiss, which in another
state of mind they would think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this
state of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy whom they have
been taught to fear, but against the ministry, who are more within their
reach, and who have refused conditions that are not unreasonable, from
power that they have been taught to consider as irresistible.