disease. In armies it would be endless to number up the foolish causes and the dreadful effects of pannicks. A Minister therefore cannot guard himself sufficiently against the contagion of what may arise.
"It is not surprising in the situation above described, the army reduced to 6000 men—the best sent to Germany under the Duke of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville—the service blown upon, and the enemy upon their guard, that the command went abegging. Many were offered it and all refused. General Dury, a favourite adjutant of the Duke's hesitated greatly; but was immediately decided against it, upon the receipt of an anonymous letter sent him express advising him strongly against it. I have reason to believe that this letter had originated from the fun of some young officers, who imagined they would from circumstances have very little weight if General Dury was appointed, and that they might have some if it went elsewhere. At last General Bligh was sent for from Ireland—an old, dull, brave, honest man.[1]
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"It is common with most men to attribute all events to some one cause. It suits the pedantry of the historians, who are for making everything into a system, and it saves others the great trouble of combining and thinking. But no great river arises from one source, but on examination will be found to come from the accidental junction of a number of small streams. Besides I am convinced that there are two classes of causes, one ostensible and plausible, calculated to meet the publick eye and mind: the other from private and bye motives, which men scarcely dare to own to themselves.[2] How few actions in life are there which cannot be traced to motives of the latter sort. The uncertain limits of the French and English territories in
- ↑ General Dury went out, however, as second-in-command, and was killed in 1758 at St. Cast. Horace Walpole, in the Journal of the Reign of George II., iii. 137, accuses General Bligh of "having been actuated in these enterprises by a young Lord Fitzmaurice and the adventurer Clarke" (the Lieutenant Robert Clerke alluded to above, p. 72).
- ↑ This passage is an echo of the chapter in which Thucydides distinguishes between the avowed and the real causes of the Peloponnesian war, i. ch. xxiii.
