I know it is supposed, that, if good terms of capitulation are not
granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the
national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment
cautiously to be made. _Reculer pour mieux sauter_, according to the
French byword, cannot be trusted to as a general rule of conduct. 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 honor 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,[28] 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.
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