He who accepts the command of a revolutionary army
is ever fearful of being sacrificed by his own soldiers. His office
makes him the ostensible champion of liberty; but his army claim a
greater licence than consists with the requisite exercise of discipline
and authority. His subordinate officers envy his supremacy; for the
chain of prescriptive gradation is dissolved by the pretext of
preferring merit; and what soldier of fortune is there who does not
think himself equal to the highest posts which his machinations and
enterprize can procure. We Loyalists (for such, Sir, I now in confidence
own myself to be) have often said that Lord Bellingham was only half
wicked. He retained too much of the gentleman to practise extortion, or
to connive at the rapacity by which his subalterns tried to make the
most of their brief authority. He enforced discipline without
condescending to that familiarity and occasional indulgence which make
severity palatable. He was an agent of the new system, trying to
introduce the manners of the old.
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