CONDirCT OF AMERICAN OFFICERS IN MEXICO.
War, being, always waged for the immediate purpose of inflicting misery and death, necessarily calls into action the malignant passions of our nature. It is impossible that those who are contriving the ruin and death of their enemies, should exercise towards them that love, and kindness, and forgiveness enjoined by Christianity. Hence the profession of arms has a strong tendency to blunt the sen- sibiHties of the soldier, and to render him callous to the sufferings of his victim. Military glory, which is the prize that stimulates the ambition of the soldier, founded, as it is upon his bravery, skill, and success in destroying his enemy, and totally disconnected from all reference to the justice of the cause in which his victories are achieved has necessarily an unhappy influence in perverting the moral sense. In those qualities which twine the lam*el around the brows of the warrior, there is no one element of moral goodness ; nothing which has not been often ex- hibited by the most depraved of mankind. It has been well said, that when the soldier has vigorously assaulted the enemy, when though repulsed he returns to the con- flict, when being wounded he continues to brandish his sword till his grasp relaxes in death, and he falls on the field " covered with glory," he has attained to the moral rank of a bull- dog. Hence the thirst for military fame, by diverting the mind from the contemplation and pursuit of objects really virtuous, renders the soldier peculiarly exposed to the allurements of vice. His ordinary life, moreover, is on various accounts unfavorable to the culti- vation of those benevolent and virtuous affections which adorn and bless society. Banished from the softening and humanizino: influences of domestic associations, exiled from wife and children, Avithout otiier occupations than the monotonous routine of the camp or the barrack, and with no companions but such as are