⸺’Tis one thing, brother Shandy , for a soldier to hazard his own life—to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces:⸺’Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man,—To stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears:⸺’Tis one thing, I say, brother Shandy , to do this,—and ’tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo.
Need I be told, dear Yorick , as I was by you, in Le Fever’s funeral sermon, That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this? ⸺But why did you not add, Yorick ,—if not by nature —that he is so by necessity ?⸺For what is war? what is it, Yorick , when fought as ours has been, upon principles of liberty , and upon principles of honour ⸺what is it, but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? And heaven is my witness, brother Shandy , that the pleasure I have taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our creation.