e calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of
the public weal enjoy high consideration, and are considered as the best
arbitrators on points of honor and manly bearing. With the standard of
morality established in the military profession the general standard of
morality must to a great extent sink or rise. It is, therefore, a
fortunate circumstance that, during a long course of years, respect for
the weak and clemency towards the vanquished have been considered as
qualities not less essential to the accomplished soldier than personal
courage. How long would this continue to be the case, if the slaying of
prisoners were a part of the daily duty of the warrior? What man of kind
and generous nature would, under such a system, willingly bear arms?
Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long continue kind and
generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless
became the characteristic of military men, the taint must rapidly spread
to civil and to domestic life, and must show itself in all the dealings
of the strong with the weak, of husbands with wives, of employers with
workmen, of creditors with debtors?

But, thank God, Barere's decree was a mere dead letter. It was to be
executed by men very different from those who, in the interior of
France, were the instruments of the Committee of Public Safety, who
prated at Jacobin Clubs, and ran to Fouquier Tinville with charges of
incivism against women whom they could not seduce, and bankers from whom
they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded
the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kleber, had made good the defence
of the wood of Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more
degrading than that of the hangman. "The Convention," said an officer to
his men, "has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be shot."
"We will not shoot them," answered a stout-hearted sergeant. "Send them
to the Convention. If the deputies take pleasure in killing a prisoner
they may kill him themselves, and eat him too, like savages as they
are." This was the sentiment of the whole army. Bonaparte, who
thoroughly understood war, who at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof
that he was not unwilling to strain the laws of war to their utmost
rigor, and whose hatred of England amounted to a folly, always spoke of
Barere's decree with loathing, and boasted that the army had refused to
obey the Convention.

Such disobedience on