The Life of General Francis Marion — John Locke — John Shaqi
The Life of General Francis Marion
John Locke · en
A British officer, a major Muckleworth, for example, calls at my plantation,
and takes my fine horses and fat beeves, my pigs, my poultry and grain;
but at parting, launches out for me a fist full of yellow boys!
On the other hand, an American officer calls and sweeps me of everything,
and then lugs out a bundle of continental proc! such trash,
that hardly a cow would give a corn shock for a horse load of it.
The Englishman leaves me richer than he found me, and abler
to educate and provide for my children: the American leaves me and my family
half ruined. Now I wish to know where, in such a selfish world as this,
where is there a man in a million, but would take part
with the generous Englishman, and fight for him?
This was the theory of Marion; and it was the practice of Muckleworth,
whom it certainly saved to the British; and would, if universal,
have saved Carolina and Georgia to them too; and perhaps, all America.
But so little idea had they of this mode of conciliating to conquer,
that when the good major Muckleworth returned to Charleston,
he was hooted at by the British officers, who said he might do well enough
for a chaplain, or a methodist preacher, for what they knew,
but they'd be d--n-d if he were fit to be a British major.
The truth is, such divine philosophy was too refined for such coarse
and vulgar characters, as Cornwallis, Rawdon, Tarleton, Balfour, and Weymies;
monsters who disgraced the brave and generous nation they represented,
and completely damned the cause they were sent to save.
But what better was to have been expected of those, who,
from early life, if tradition say true, discovered a total dislike
to the ennobling pleasures of literature and devotion, but a boundless passion
for the brutalizing sports of the bear-garden and cock-pit?
Bull-baiters, cock-fighters, and dog worriers, turned officers,
had no idea of conquering the Americans, but by "cutting their throats
or knocking out their brains;" or as the tender-hearted Cornwallis commanded,
by "hanging them, and taking away, or destroying their goods."
Now Satan himself could have counselled my lord better than that;
as any man may see, who will but open his bible and turn to the book of Job,
chap. the 1st, verse 6th, and so on. There Moses informs, that when Satan,
whose effrontery is up to any thing, presented himself at the grand levee,
the Almighty very civilly asked him, (now mind that, `saints',
in your speech to poor sinners) -- the Almighty, I say,
very CIVILLY asked him "where he had been of late."
To this, his royal highness, the brimstone king, replied,
that he had been only taking a turn or two "up and down the earth."
The divine voice again interrogated: "Hast thou considered my servant Job?
an excellent man, is he not; one who feareth God and escheweth evil?"