iles had, in a long
course of opposition to tyranny, been excited into a morbid state
of understanding and temper, which made the most just and necessary
restraint insupportable to them. They knew that without Argyle they
could do nothing. They ought to have known that, unless they wished to
run headlong to ruin, they must either repose full confidence in their
leader, or relinquish all thoughts of military enterprise. Experience
has fully proved that in war every operation, from the greatest to the
smallest, ought to be under the absolute direction of one mind, and
that every subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly,
strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he
disapproves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him.
Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other checks
by which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from abusing power,
are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly imputed many of the
disasters of Venice and Florence to the jealousy which led those
republics to interfere with every one of their generals. [337] The Dutch
practice of sending to an army deputies, without whose consent no great
blow could be struck, was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly
by no means certain that a captain, who has been entrusted with
dictatorial power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that
power in the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerations
which ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to vindicate
public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to try the chance
of war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to their chief that plenary
authority without which war cannot be well conducted. It is possible
that, if they give him that authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a
Napoleon. But it is almost certain that, if they withhold from him that
authority, their enterprises will end like the enterprise of Argyle.

Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican enthusiasm,
and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the conduct of great
affairs, employed all their industry and ingenuity, not in collecting
means for the attack which they were about to make on a formidable
enemy, but in devising restraints on their leader's power and securities
against his ambition. The selfcomplacent stupidity with which they
insisted on Organising an army as if they had been organising a
commonwealth would be incr