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self-denying, charitable, and forgiving man; he was a man of powerful, aggressive, self-willed personality, with violent passions, generous, brutal, laborious, and domineering, with an undisguised contempt for the sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth commandments, and no deep concern for the other six.
The flimsy objection, 'We don't admire their morals,' may be brushed aside at once. We have a whole-hearted admiration for these men, there is no pigeon-holing of one little set of qualities labelled 'morals;' we admire the men, character and conduct, as set forth in life. Our true national heroes nearly all belong to this stamp. We have no regard whatever for the Christian characters of holy George Herbert, pious John Wesley, saintly Hannah More, that we can compare for one moment with the enthusiasm which encircles the names of Sidney, Raleigh, Hampden, Warren Hastings, Charles James Fox, Nelson, and Wellington. Drive it down to an honest test, and 'morality,' in the narrower senses of the word, hardly counts, so large is the dispensation in Christian virtues which we lavish on our great men. We require of them neither sexual morality, nor common honesty, nor any regard for the lives of people who are not their own countrymen.