In many things success at first is dangerous, and defeat an excellent medicine for testing people's honesty -- for setting them honestly to work to see what they want, and what are the best modes of attaining it. Our sound thrashing, as a nation, in the first French war was the making of our armies; and it is good for an idea, as well as for a man, to bear the yoke in his youth.

Lectures on Ancien Regime. 1867.