Page:The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock - 1847.djvu/10

 VI INTRODUCTION.

should shew the wisdom and foresight of your illus trious brother; but finding myself bound to relate so many strong facts affecting my superiors, I paused for reasons, which, in a military man, you will, I think, consider prudent.&quot; What these anecdotes were, or would have been, is now a matter of conjec ture, as I fear that they are irrecoverably lost. Like the writer of this letter, I have experienced some hesitation in narrating facts, as I wished not to give either pain or offence, remembering the maxim : &quot; On doit des egards aux vivans on ne doit aux niorts que la verite ; &quot; but my duty as a biographer has prevailed over every other consideration ; and if, as a civilian, I have laboured under a disadvantage in describing military events, I trust that that disad vantage is in some measure compensated by the greater freedom with which I have been enabled to write in illustration of my subject. This freedom will doubtless be displeasing to a few, who, or whose relatives, not having figured very creditably during the war in Canada, will arraign this work as written too much in accordance with a sentiment of the French historian Bodin a sentiment ever upper most in my mind while compiling it : &quot; Autrefois on ecrivait 1 histoire a Tusage du dauphin ; aujourd hui c est a Pusage du peuple qu il faut 1 ecrire.&quot;

F. B. T.

GUERNSEY, April, 1847.

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