Virginia Argus

From the Baltimore American.

BRAVE MEN.

The horrible destruction of St. Sebastian is a most vexatious circumstance to the partizans of England—They do not know how to get over it, or how to palliate the enormity—The late transaction by the same sort of people at Hampton, has confirmed the former with an authority that cannot be denied—The unfortunate females of that part of Virginia, whilst they live, have cause to remember the atrocious acts committed by the Bulwark men, and make them believe all they hear of what was done in Spain.

But the advocates for England tell us, that such things are the fortune of war, and that the British commanders are brave men! It is not their bravery of which we complain, but their cruelty—Alas! History is full of such brave men. We can now only mention a few of them.

Marius and Scylla were brave men; and so were Attila and Alaric—Tilly, who, in the thirty years' religious war in Germany, sacked Magdeburgh, was a brave man; and so was Suwarroff, who stormed Ismail, and put 30,000 Turks to the sword. It may be said, that they were only Turks, but he soon after massacred 30,000 Christians at Warsaw, for defending the liberty of Poland!—In comparison with this human butcher, Tecumseh the Indian was an angel of innocence—yet, we recollect, when this Suwarroff was a prodigious favorite with the English partizans in this country, when they flattered themselves in the hope that he would conquer France—They "remember to forget" this circumstance, and loudly talk of Bonaparte's invasion of Russia and the taking of Moscow—but every one knows, that he did not burn that city—it was destroyed by its barbarous Governor.

It is readily acknowledged, that England has produced many good and great men, but her annals are also disgraced by the bloody deeds of the kind of brave men now reprobated—The virtuous portion of England laments, and ever will lament, the abominable cruelties of their brave men in India, where were either slain or starved to death, millions of Hindoos, the most innocent race of men on the face of the globe—and yet these enormities were committed by men calling themselves Christians, and commissioned by "the Bulwark of Religion!"

We shall only mention one other brave man of England, Lord Nelson—We point to his barbarous conduct, in company with "his dear Lady Hamilton," in the atrocious murder of several hundreds of prisoners in the bay of Naples—All the historians of this brave man have slided over this abominable deed, except Southey, and he, for State reasons, touched it as gently as he could, ascribing it to the Circean witchery of the Lady, who then held the naval hero in her silken chains, whilst her husband and his wife were both alive—but these brave men, it seems, are privileged to commit every iniquity, & still to be Heroes. Our vulgar sort of notions of Virtue and Religion are lost in the false splendor of their bloody deeds!

Fortunately for the honor of the country, another Englishman, Captain Townbridge, had the noble fortitude to behave like a Gentleman and a Christian, and to save the lives of a number of other prisoners who had fallen into his power—Yet this humane Seaman is now only a half-pay Captain, whilst the ferocious Nelson was made a Lord, decorated with ribbons, and gratified with a large pension at the expence of the nation.—Such, reader, are the distinctions awarded by Statesmen—poverty and obscurity to humanity—honors and riches to barbarity!