im. There remains, then, only the military part; and it would have
been prudent in Mr. Washington not to have awakened enquiry upon that
subject. Fame then was cheap; he enjoyed it cheaply; and nobody was
disposed to take away the laurels that, whether they were _acquired_ or
not, had been _given_.

Mr. Washington's merit consisted in constancy. But constancy was the
common virtue of the revolution. Who was there that was inconstant? I
know but of one military defection, that of Arnold; and I know of no
political defection, among those who made themselves eminent when the
revolution was formed by the declaration of independence. Even Silas
Deane, though he attempted to defraud, did not betray.(1)

1 This generous judgment by Deane's old adversary has become
questionable under recent investigations.--_Editor._.

But when we speak of military character, something more is to be
understood than constancy; and something more _ought_ to be understood
than the Fabian system of _doing nothing_. The _nothing_ part can be
done by any body. Old Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper of head quarters,
(who threatened to make the sun and the wind shine through Rivington of
New York,) 'could have done it as well as Mr. Washington. Deborah would
have been as good as Barak.

Mr. Washington had the nominal rank of Commander in Chief, but he was
not so in fact. He had, in reality, only a separate command. He had no
controul over, or direction of, the army to the northward under Gates,
that captured Burgoyne; nor of that to the south under [Nathaniel]
Greene, that recovered the southern States.(2) The nominal rank,
however, of Commander in Chief, served to throw upon him the lustre
of those actions, and to make him appear as the soul and centre of all
military operations in America.

1 The Tory publisher of New York City, whose press was
destroyed in 1775 by a mob of Connecticut soldiers.--
_Editor._

2 See Mr. Winterbotham's valuable History of America, lately
published.--Author. [The "History of the Establishment of
Independence" is contained in the first of Mr.
Winterbotham's four volumes (London, 1795).--_Editor._.]

He commenced his command June, 1775, during the time the Massachusetts
army lay before Boston, and after the affair of Bunker-hill. The
commencement of his command was the commencement of inactivity. Nothing
was afterwards done, or attempted to be done, during the nine months