tory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship; and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators[1].
I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, whoever understood the nature of yahoos, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to he capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to
- ↑ It would perhaps be impossible, by the most laboured argument, or forcible eloquence, to show the absurd injustice and horrid cruelty of war so effectually, as by this simple exhibition of them in a new light: with war, including every species of iniquity and every art of destruction, we become familiar by degrees under specious terms, which are seldom examined, because they are learned at an age, in which the mind implicitly receives and retains whatever is impressed: thus it happens, that when one man murders another to gratify his lust we shudder; but when one man murders a million to gratify his vanity we approve and we admire, we envy and we applaud. If, when this and the preceding pages are read, we discover with astonishment, that when the same events have occurred in history we felt no emotion, and acquiesced in wars which we could not but know to have been commenced for such causes, and carried on by such means; let not him be censured for too much debasing his species, who has contributed to their felicity and preservation, by stripping off the veil of custom und prejudice, and holding up in their native deformity the vices by which they become wretched, and the arts by which they are destroyed.
