the French landed and had done with it the better.

The big Miss Jessamine's objection to him was that he was a soldier, and
this prejudice was shared by all the Green. "A soldier," as the speaker
from the town had observed, "is a bloodthirsty, unsettled sort of a
rascal; that the peaceable, home-loving, bread-winning citizen can never
conscientiously look on as a brother, till he has beaten his sword into
a ploughshare, and his spear into a pruning-hook."

On the other hand there was some truth in what the Postman (an old
soldier) said in reply; that the sword has to cut a way for us out of
many a scrape into which our bread-winners get us when they drive their
ploughshares into fallows that don't belong to them. Indeed, whilst our
most peaceful citizens were prosperous chiefly by means of cotton, of
sugar, and of the rise and fall of the money-market (not to speak of
such salable matters as opium, firearms, and "black ivory"),
disturbances were apt to arise in India, Africa and other outlandish
parts, where the fathers of our domestic race were making fortunes for
their families. And, for that matter, even on the Green, we did not wish
the military to leave us in the lurch, so long as there was any fear
that the French were coming. [Footnote: "'The political men declare
war, and generally for commercial interests; but when the nation is thus
embroiled with its neighbors the soldier ... draws the sword, at the
command of his country.... One word as to thy comparison of military and
commercial persons. What manner of men be they who have supplied the
Caffres with the firearms and ammunition to maintain their savage and
deplorable wars? Assuredly they are not military.... Cease then, if thou
would'st be counted among the just, to vilify soldiers."--W. Napier,
Lieut. General, _November_, 1851.]