Frederick was in position and disposition a despot.  His territories were small, while his ambition was boundless.  He was unable to pay a large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones.  He got French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in his ranks upon the same terms.  Had the French Government retraced its steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick’s army would have fallen to pieces ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision’.

‘Parmi nous,’ says Montesquieu, ’les desertions sont frequentes parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et qu’il n’y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage sur les autres.  Chez les Romains elles etaient plus rares—­des soldats tires du sein d’un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sur de commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guere penser a s’ aviler jusqu’a cesser d’etre Romains.’[20] But was it the poor soldiers who were to blame if they were ‘vile’, and had ‘no advantage over others’, or the Government that took them from the vilest classes, or made their condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest class in society?  The Romans deserted under the same circumstances, and, as I have stated, formed the elite of the army of Mithridates and the other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.

Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they fought against us?[21] They deserted from our ships of war because they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board the former.  When ‘England expected every man to do his duty’ at Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to fight for her?  Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor acquires in scenes of peril ‘upon the high and giddy mast’ as much his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at schools and colleges?  And have not our senators, morally and religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service, upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy?  A feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children, and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose history we are acquainted.[22]