Men bear with the defects of their policy, as they do with hardships and inconveniencies in their manner of living. The alarms and the fatigues of war become a necessary recreation to those who are accustomed to them, and who have the tone of their passions raised above less animating or trying occasions. Old men, among the courtiers of Attila, wept, when they heard of heroic deeds, which they themselves could no longer perform.(42*)And among the Celtic nations, when age rendered the warrior unfit for his former toils, it was the custom, in order to abridge the languors of a listless and inactive life, to sue for death at the hands of his friends.(43*)With all this ferocity of spirit, the rude nations of the West were subdued by the policy and more regular warfare of the Romans. The point of honour, which the barbarians of Europe adopted as individuals, exposed them to a peculiar disadvantage, by rendering them, even in their national wars, averse to assailing their enemy by surprise, or taking the benefit of stratagem; and though separately bold and intrepid, yet, like other rude nations, they were, when assembled in great bodies, addicted to superstition, and subject to panics.
They were, from a consciousness of their personal courage and force, sanguine on the eve of battle; they were, beyond the bounds of moderation, elated on success, and dejected in adversity. and being disposed to consider every event as a judgement of the gods, they were never qualified by an uniform application of prudence, to make the most of their forces, to repair their misfortunes, or to improve their advantages.
Resigned to the government of affection and passion, they were generous and faithful where they had fixed an attachment;implacable, froward, and cruel, where they had conceived a dislike: addicted to debauchery, and the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, they deliberated on the affairs of state in the heat of their riot; and in the same dangerous moments, conceived the designs of military enterprise, or terminated their domestic dissensions by the dagger or the sword.
In their wars they preferred death to captivity. The victorious armies of the Romans, in entering a town by assault, or inforcing an incampment, have found the mother in the act of destroying her children, that they might not be taken; and the dagger of the parent, red with the blood of his family, ready to be plunged at last into his own breast.(44*)In all these particulars we perceive that vigour of spirit, which renders disorder itself respectable, and which qualities men, if fortunate in their situation, to lay the basis of domestic liberty, as well as to maintain against foreign enemies their national independence and freedom.
NOTES:
1. Hume's History, ch. 8, p. 278.
2. Ibid., p. 73.
3. History of the Caribbees.
4. Charlevoix.
5. Lafitau.
6. Ibid.
7. Charlevoix.
8. Wafer's account of the Isthmus of Darien.
9. Colden's History of the Five Nations.
10. Lafitau, Charlevoix, Colden, etc.
11. Lafitau.
12. Muneribus gaudent, sed nec data imputant, nec acceptis obligantur.
13. Charlevoix.
14. Lafitau.
15. Charlevoix.
16. Charlevoix.
17. Colden.
18. Charlevoix.
19. Ibid. This writer says, that he has seen a boy and a girl, having bound their naked arms together, place a burning coal between them, to try who would shake it off first.
20. Lafitau.
21. Charlevoix.
22. Tacitus, Lafitau, Charlevoix.
23. Caesar questus, quod quum ultro in continentem legatis missis pacem a se petissent, bellum sine causa intulissent. Lib. 4.
24. Abulgaze's Genealogical History of the Tartars.
25. Pirgum quin immo et iners videtur, sudore acquirere qod possis sanguine parare.
26. Rubruquis.
27. History of the Caribbees.
28. Tacitus, De moribus Germanorum.
29. Jean du Plan Carpen. Rubruquis, Caesar, Tacit.
30. Kolbe, Description of the Cape of Good Hope.
31. Simon de St Quintin.
32. De moribus Germanorum.
33. Chardin's Travels.
34. See Hume's History of the Tudors. -- There seemed to be nothing wanting to establish a perfect despotism in that house, but a few regiments of troops under the command of the crown.
35. See the History of the Huns.
36. De Bello Gallico, lib. 6.
37. Livy.
38. Livy, lib. 3.
39. Caesar.
40. Priscus, when employed on an embassy to Attila, was accosted in Greek, by a person who wore the dress of a Scythian. Having expressed surprise, and being desirous to know the cause of his stay in so wild a company, was told, that this Greek had been a captive, and for some time a slave, till he obtained his liberty in reward of some remarkable action. 'I live more happily here,'
says he, 'than ever I did under the Roman government: for they who live with the Scythians, if they can endure the fatigues of war, have nothing else to molest them; they enjoy their possession undisturbed: whereas you are continually a prey to foreign enemies, or to bad government; you are forbid to carry arms in your own defence; you suffer from the remissness and ill conduct of those who are appointed to protect you; the evils of peace are even worse than those of war; no punishment is ever inflicted on the powerful or the rich; no mercy is shown to the poor; although your institutions were wisely devised, yet in the management of corrupted men, their effects are pernicious and cruel.' Excerpta de legationibus.
41. D'Arvieux' History of the Wild Arabs.
42. Ibid.
43. Ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos, Impatiens aevi spernit novisse senectam.
Silius, lib. I, 225.
44. Liv. lib. xli. II. Dio. Cass.
