A more pleasing precedent, therefore, than that of the French officers in the Palatinate, or of the English at Copenhagen, is the case of Admiral Keppel, who, whilst numbers of naval officers flocked to the Admiralty to offer their services or to request employment, steadily declined to take part in the war of England against her American colonies, because he deemed her cause a bad one.[330] He did no violence to his reason or conscience nor tarnished his fame by acting a part, of which in his individual capacity he disapproved. His example is here held up as illustrating the only true doctrine, and the only one that at all accords with the most rudimentary principles of either religion or morality. The contrary doctrine bids a man to forswear the use of both his reason and his conscience in consideration for his pay, and deprives him of that liberty of thought and moral action compared with which his civil and political liberty are nothing worth. For what indeed is this contrary time-honoured doctrine when stripped of all superfluities, and displayed in the outfit of common sense and common words? What is it but that the duty of military obedience overrides all duty of a man towards himself; that, though he may not voluntarily destroy his body, he cannot do too much violence to his soul; that it is his duty to annihilate his moral and intellectual being, to commit spiritual suicide, to forego the use of the noblest faculties which belong to him as a man; that to do all this is a just cause of pride to him, and that he is in all respects the nobler and better for assimilating himself to that brainless and heartless condition which is that also of his charger or his rifle? If this doctrine is true and sound, then it may be asked whether there has ever been or exists upon the earth any tyranny, ecclesiastical or political, comparable to this military one; whether any but the baser forms of priestcraft have ever sought to deprive a man so completely of the enjoyment of his highest human attributes, or to absolve him so utterly from all moral responsibility for his actions.