"Is it true, then, that my solicitude for the interest of the volunteers is to be made by them a pretext for disgracing a name which they have rendered illustrious? Is a certificate, designed solely for their benefit, to become the rallying word for mutiny? Strange perversion of feeling and of reasoning! Have I really any power to discharge men whose term of service has not expired? If I were weak or wicked enough to attempt the exercise of such a power, does any one believe the soldier would be thereby exonerated from the obligation he has voluntarily taken upon himself to his government? I should become a traitor to the important concern which has been intrusted to my management, while the soldier who had been deceived by a false hope of liberation would be still liable to redeem his ple
