The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.
And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way, whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person and perform the duty of a captain; the republic has to send its citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it ought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so that he does not leave the command.
"Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the
mercenary and the prudent motive?
I am the most mercenary little wretch that ever lived in the world.'
But when I had been disappointed of my splendid fortune, and came to see it from day to day in other hands, and to have before my eyes what it could really do, then I became the mercenary little wretch I am.'
"My Father (he continued) is a mean and
mercenary wretch--it is only to such particular freinds as this Dear Party that I would thus betray his failings.
Harthouse,' said Tom, softening in his admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, 'you can't tell her that I ever praised her for being
mercenary. I may have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason.
The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office from the King, and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil.
And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured.
Lecount's cool avowal, when she rose to leave us, of her own
mercenary motives in wishing to discover her master and to enlighten him.
"And you say the Swiss are
mercenary, as a parrot says 'Poor Poll,' or as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or as the French accuse them of being perfidious: there is no justice in your dictums."
And now, here was the man--whom I had always believed to be a smooth-tongued impostor--justifying the very worst that I had thought of him, and plainly revealing the
mercenary object of the marriage, on his side!