SPEECH BEFORE THE VKU'K lA-.XGUK. 5 



speak of llio<e inoiistruiis armies born in clays of fever, 

 under the iulluence of vertigo, and which, making of 

 ])eacc a seonrge almost as terrible as war itself, dig 

 nnder the tramp of their ponderous battalions IxAtom- 

 less pits in the liminces of the Slate, in the jjrosiierity 

 of families, in the blood of sueh multitudes of young 

 men made sterile or corrupt. [Lircli/ cfj)probufion.\ 

 Surely I have no admiration for that; and when Europe 

 wakes, at last, from this bad dream which she has been 

 dreaming for some years, not content with effacing such 

 scandals from her laws and usages, she will blush that 

 she cannot also expunge them from her history. What 

 we want is the army reduced to its legitimate propor- 

 tions; withdrawn in time of peace from the corrupting 

 life of the garrison, and organized in such wise as to lind 

 its greatest satisfaction in peace. We have been told of 

 the six thousand men who constitute the effective force 

 of the United States. [S/niles.] I do not think that we 

 are far enough advanced toward the future to be satis- 

 lied with that. [JIarls of assent.] But we have on 

 the old continent other examples moi'c in correspond- 

 ence with our social condition, which we shall do well, 

 I will not say to copy, but to imitate with originality 

 and independence, hi the better part of Europe, the 

 soldier is less isolated than with us from family and 

 country life. It is in cultivating the soil, in dwelling 

 by the fireside, that he learns to love them and defend 

 them. Fro avis ct focis. But why look beyond our- 

 selves ? Have we forgotten the first wars of our own 

 republic, and those levies in mass to save the country, 

 and those armies of undrilled peasants, oftentimes with- 

 out shoes and without bread, who went forth to cover 

 the frontier with a belt of heroic hearts, that they might 

 hide from the eye of the stranger the shame within— 



