Cowards are cruel

1 While men look with admiration on the kind,
[pitiful], and benevolent, and unsparingly
praise the brave and magnanimous; they look
6 with disdain on the coward, (if not with detestation).
But while the poet tells us that cowards are cruel,
we cannot embrace the proposition as containing
a universal truth, as though there was a nec
essary and inseparable connection between
cowardice and cruelty. For it does not follow,
that because a person is subject to a habitual
timidity, and is totally destitute of that magni
nimity of soul, required to form the brave;
11 that he must, of necessity, be governed by an
inhuman and unfeeling temper. Many persons
1 are to be met with, who, while they are strangers to the he
2 2 roick virtues, show themselves acquainted with the
2 exercise of compassion and benevolence. Yes, a person
may desert the rank of the army through fear, or fall back
8 2 in the day of battle; he may be too pusillanimous to
resent and insult; or he may dread darkness and solitude,
lest his eyes should meet with some ghastly spectre; and yet
not be callous to the woes of his fellow men, nor
indifferent towards the children of misfortune,
8 and of sorrows.

All that the proposition can properly embrace, then, is that the
man is cruel, who values his own lif safty above the
general good, who is profuse of the lives of others to pre
serve his own, and forsakes the post, to which duty and honour honour call, lest he should encounter danger.

1 The man, who values his own safty at a higher rate, than
the publick interest, may well be regarded as guilty
8.1.2 of cruelty. Such a man, occupying an elevated statation,
may prove the cause of calamity and distress to the
state. In the hour of danger, when the lives of
thousands, or the security of a nation may be de
pending on his firmness and intrepidity, he may be
2} seen forsaking his past, and leaving the weak
3} and helpless to the mercy of an invading foe.
2 3 1} The cruelty of cowards are is further seen, in those, who,
1}2 to secure their own lives from meritted destruction,
have been unsparing in the torture and
2 murder of others. History affords too my many
1 examples of those, who, corroded by conscience, have
been under continual suspicion of conspiracy
3 against themselves; (and) to prevent which, they have
resorted to the most cruel and bloody measures.
3 Who have has not heard of Dionysius the Tyrant, who was
so apprehensive that all his subjects were conspi
2 ring against his life, that he would not trust his
barber to dress his head, nor admit into his pres
sence his most intimate friends, without a
previous examination? While he was sentencing
to the dungeon and the block every one on
whom his suspicion rested?

1 Another illustration of this subject, is afforded in
1 the conduct of the sanguinary Robespierre, who, for
1 a short time, was so prominent in the French revolution.
6 A man, vain, envious and inexorable. (From his heart,) it would seem that every tender feeling had
been expelled, and every foul passion made wel
3 come to it. His thirst for blood, especially the blood of those whom
he suspected to be his opponents, was insatiable.
3 To incur have incurred his displeasure, would mark
out the the offender for immediate or future death, (or for future
1 execution); for, to forgive, was not a sentiment
of his heart. Yet this monster in human form,
3 is pronounce by historians, to have been a
coward.

There is another class of cowards, who may be adverted
to as being cruel. They are those, who possessing
other necessary qualifications, have not the christian
fortitude, to plant the standard of the Cross in the
dark places of the earth. If christian benevolence
ought ever to be exercised, if courage should ever
be exerted, it is when viewing a world under the
empire of sin. Here indeed is an extensive field
1 for the christian soldier; , here he may advance
1 with boldness, assured, that in death itself he shall
be victorious. But if the fear of persecu
tion; or the dread of death, deter any one from
1 entering this field; , is he not cruel? Is it not
1 the worst of folly cruelty, ? to see men perishing
under the dominion of vice and folly, and
yet not (to have courage) to extend to them the
+ hand of deliverance?

Thus it appears, that the proposition is in a great
measure true, "that cowards are cruel."

[The hisography of the moral OK, is too 1]

Mitchell

Mitchell

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