time, it alleviates captivity, and takes away something from the miseries of war. The rage of war, however mitigated, will always fill the world with calamity and horrour; let it not, then, be unnecessarily extended; let animosity and hostility cease together; and no man be longer deemed an enemy, than while his sword is drawn against us. 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. 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 • This short paper was added to some editions of the Idler, when collected into volumes, but not by Dr. Johnson, as Mr. Boswell asserts, nor to the early editions of that work. 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. There are some, perhaps, who would imagine, that every Englishman fights better than the subjects of absolute governments, because he has more to defend. But what has the English more than the French soldier? Property they are both, commonly, without. Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving; and this choice is, I suppose, equally allowed in every country. The English soldier seldom has his head very full of the constitution; nor has there been, for more than a century, any war that put the property or liberty of a single Englishman in danger. Whence, then, is the courage of the English vulgar? It proceeds, in my opinion, from that dissolution of dependence, which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour; and is no less necessary to his employer, than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he, consequently, aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honour, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and, as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly pursued. From this neglect of subordination, I do not deny, that some inconveniencies factors and traders, having no other purpose in view than immediate profit, use all the arts of an European countinghouse, to defraud the simple hunter of his furs. These are some of the causes of our present weakness; our planters are always quarrelling with their governour, whom they consider as less to be trusted than the French; and our traders hourly alienate the Indians by their tricks and oppressions, and we continue every day to show, by new proofs; that no people can be great, who have ceased to be virtuous. OBSERVATIONS ON THE TREATY Between his Britannick majesty and imperial majesty of all the Russias, signed at Moscow, Dec. 11, 1742; the treaty between his Britannick majesty and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, signed June 18, 1755; and the treaty between his Britannick majesty and her imperial majesty of all the Russias, signed at St. Petersburg, Sept. 18, 1755 . THESE are the treaties which, for many months, filled the senate with debates, and the kingdom with clamours; which were represented, on one part, as instances of the most profound policy and the most active care of the publick welfare, and, on the other, as acts of the most contemptible folly and most flagrant corruption, as violations of the great trust of government, by which the wealth of Britain is sacrificed to private views and to a particular province. What honours our ministers and negotiators may expect to be paid to their wisdom; it is hard to determine, for the demands of vanity are not easily estimated. They should consider, before they call too loudly for encomiums, that they live in an age, when the power of gold is no longer a secret, and in which no man finds much difficulty in making a bargain, with money in his hand. To hire troops is very easy to those who are willing to pay their From the Literary Magazine, for July, 1756. price. It appears, therefore, that whatever has been done, was done by means which every man knows how to use, if fortune is kind enough to put them in his power. To arm the nations of the north in the cause of Britain, to bring down hosts against France, from the polar circle, has, indeed, a sound of magnificence, which might induce a mind unacquainted with publick affairs to imagine, that some effort of policy, more than human, had been exerted, by which distant nations were armed in our defence, and the influence of Britain was extended to the utmost limits of the world. But when this striking phenomenon of negotiation is more nearly inspected, it appears a bargain, merely mercantile, of one power that wanted troops more than money, with another that wanted money, and was burdened with troops; between whom their mutual wants made an easy contract, and who have no other friendship for each other, than reciprocal convenience happens to produce. We shall, therefore, leave the praises of our ministers to others, yet not without this acknowledgment, that if they have done little, they do not seem to boast of doing much; and, that whether influenced by modesty or frugality, they have not wearied the publick with mercenary panegyrists, but have been content with the concurrence of the parliament, and have not much solicited the applauses of the people. In publick, as in private transactions, men more frequently deviate from the right, for want of virtue, than of wisdom ; and those who declare themselves dissatisfied with these treaties, impute them not to folly, but corruption. By these advocates for the independence of Britain, who, whether their arguments be just, or not, seem to be most favourably heard by the people, it is alleged, that these treaties are expensive, without advantage; that they waste the treasure, which we want for our own defence, upon a foreign interest; and pour the gains of our commerce into the coffers of princes, whose enmity cannot hurt, nor friendship help us; who set their subjects to sale, like sheep or oxen, without any inquiry after the |