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is vested by the law, in the governor in council."

Now, if it be made apparent that colonel Munro, instead of having exhausted all the immediate means of redress, had rushed, at once, and in the first instance, into the arms of the power, which he knew to be disposed to protect him, despising and trampling on the military power immediately set over him, he will be guilty of the contempt for which he is reprimanded, and in which the government cannot possibly be understood to have any share, without wilfully countenancing him, in what the highest authority in India admits to be a palpable breach of duty. That this was literally the fact, may be seen by the letter of colonel Munro, to the secretary of the government, of the 22d of January, in which he forwards his complaint, in the first instance; assigning the near dispatch of the ships as the reason of the irregularity; observing, also, that he had, on the same day, forwarded a like letter, "through the channel of his excellency the commander-inchief;" the answer to which he had not thought it expedient, it may be supposed, to await; though it followed on the succeeding day.

This explanation will save the memory of lieut.-general M'Dowall from a part of the bitter reproach cast upon it in this correspondence,and the orders and writings of the Madras government. To that end some expl..nation seemed necessary; but not to the support of the act of the staff officers, who published the general's orders. It would be sufficient for their defence to say, that the breach of duty, for which general M Dowall reprimands the quarter-master-general, is distinctly marked out on the surface of the order, where it is stated to be "for appealing direct to the civil government, in contempt of military authority, and defiance of the commander-in-chief." In reprimanding a staff officer for this very clear offence, solely his own, and on which no military mind could own a doubt, the adjutant and deputy-adjutant-general were bound to acknow

ledge, and give effect to the authority of the general, by the publication of his orders. It is not alleged, even by lord Minto, that these staff officers were at liberty to discredit the averments of their commander-in-chief; nor does his lordship question the facts, or the manner in which they are described. All that is attempted, is to give a colouring to the reprimand, which it will not bear; not even on a forced and violent contruction, without relation to other circumstances, not mentioned or alluded to in the order. All these collateral circumstances are presumed, on nameless authority, to have been known to the staff officers. Without such presumption, his lordship's doctrine is worse than nothing.

It is not directly relevant to the present purpose, to consider the application or modification of the military principles, laid down in the letter of lord Minto to the cases of the staff officers; since it has been shewn, that these were wholly different, from what they were conceived by his lordship, and that as his premises are without foundation, his superstructure must fall to the ground. But it is not beyond the design of the history of these transactions to correct some notions on the principal actors in them, that appear erroneous, and calculated to create, if not questioned and refuted, some future mischief.

In considering the suspension of colonel Capper and Major Boles, lord Minto acknowledges the principle, that all officers, and more especially the adjutant and deputy-adjutant-general, are bound to obey the orders of their superiors, without regard to the quality of the order; that it would be a breach of military duty to deliberate about obedience, being merely ministerial in their functions, as the organs of communication of the commanderin-chief's will. The only exception, as defined by his lordship, and dictated by common sense, is, that they are responsible for the publication of criminal orders, understood to be so at the time of issuing them. To these plain propositions, it would be dif

ficult to frame a dissent. But what has this to do with the cases of colonel Capper and major Boies? They are supposed, by a's lordship, to apply, by the following logical course :—

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Before this order was prepared, not only known to those "confidential staff officers of the "commander-in-chief, but, it was "notori as to the hole army and "setdement, that there was a warm "and vehement dissension between "the commander-in-chief and the 66 government These officers were "acquainted with the prosecution of "lient-colonel Muro, and the part "which lieut. general M'Dowall had "taken in that proceeding; they "knew that every step in that extraordinary transaction was a studied "insult to the government; they "knew that lieut.-generai M Dowall "had become the patron and channel "of a memorial to the court of directors, highly disapproved by the president in council of Fort St. George, which he had himself, at "the instance of that government, and "at no distant period, written circu"lar letters to discourage and suppress; but which, in a riper stage "of hostility towards the person and authority of the governor, he had "countenanced and promoted. It is, "in fine, superfluous to prove, what "is beyond doubt, and is not denied, "that a warm passionate rupture had "broken out between these two high "authorities."

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What proof is there that any of these many and various facts were known to the adjutant and deputy-adjutant-general; or that they had formed the same opinion of them, as lord Minto bad himself drawn? Whatever might have been the bad hemour, subsisting between the two contending authorities, it does not appear, from any public paper, that they had ever made an unseenly disclosure of their differences to the world; but that they had more wisely kept them to themselves. These othcers could not be understood to know all that his lordship states, all that he argues, intuitive

But even if they did, what is

the inference? Because these two powers are at variance, they are, according to his lordship, to deliberate; they are to commit a positive breach of duty, in the act of hesitating to obey a superior, for the purpose of considering all the circumstances, that may, by any possibility, connect themselves with the orders received; when, after all, they may think it expedient to obey. They are encouraged to decide against their ordinary head, pre suming that, in every fancied quarrel, which he may be conjectured to have with the gov rnment, he must, of necessity, be in fault; and that they must not suffer him even to issue a sim ple reprimand, in one of the clearest instances of military crime, lest an angry government may chance to be offended. If his lordship could seriously intend to render ministerial of ficers responsible, under these unheard of circumstances, he should, in common justice, have laid down another previous principle, that the government and commander-in-chief should duly advertise such officers of the commencement and termination of their bickerings; when it may be known when this extraordinary re sponsibility commences and ends. To what does all this tend? but to shew that the obedience of subordinate officers may be dispensed with, not so, much on account of the quality of the order, which is certain, as the state of external things, about which all men may differ. What becomes of the single exception of lord Minto? it is confounded in a hundred general considerations.

A fauciful doctrine, that men's duties are to adapt themselves to persons and occasions, which are ever varying, instead of resting, as they should, on fixed and immutable principles, is most of all unfitted to the exigency of military concerns; and never could have been inculcated by the ruler of an empire, at the time when he is promulating, as he professes, principles that are to check the progress of error," unless he himself partook of the reigning infatuation of the day. At a cooler moment, he would

have abided by his fundamental position, without attempting to fritter it away, by modifications of which it is not susceptible, or by extensions, which it will not admit. He would have told the subordinate ranks of the army, that their superior's orders are imperative in all cases, except where they enjoin a positive and known crime, so plain, so manifest, so glaring, as to exclude the necessity, or possibility of reflection, or deliberation, and that in all else, to doubt is to disobey. If one season could be more unsuitable than another, for the declaration of wild and speculative doctrines, it would seem that very season, when the conflicting passions of superiors might be expect ed to communicate themselves to the body, whose first and whose only business it is to obey.

If it shall appear, from what has been said, that the release of the quartermaster-general, by the civil government, was an enfringement on the rights of the commander-in-chief, and an interruption of the course of the administration of military justice; it will follow, that it was a direct oppression to the individuals who signed the charges against that officer,and an indirect attack on the general rights of the army. If, too, it has been shewn, that the order of reprimand was a lawful order, in an ordinary case—it succeeds as a consequence, that the suspension of the commanderin-chief and the adjutant and deputy adjutant general of the army, is not to be justified. It would be superflous to ask, whether the deprivation of a large body of men of their common rights, arising out of the provisions of the law, applicable to their condition; and next, whether the stripping them of the means of their subsistence, without the form of a trial, or a hearing, are or are not circumstances of just complaint, in themselves, or whether they afford not a reason of apprehension, for the safety of the few rights of the army, which lie beyond the circle of those already invaded? If these should be considered as grievances, or fit objects of representation, there was at least a ground for the memorial, which Lord

Minto bas denied, and which it is the main object of his letter to elucidate : the character of that paper will not be, as it is termed, seditious ;-setting up extravagant claims in ideal and fanciful cases, but a bonâ fide representation of evils to the only authority in India, appointed to redress them, and to prevent future abuse in the inferior government.

There is still another objection to the paper, which may admit, perhaps, of a brief answer, and which arises out of the manner, more than the matter, of the representation; the language, and the supposed temper discoverable in it. His lordship allows that the most questionable passages in it will admit of two constructions-and the memorialists may certainly lay claim to the less offensive one, the paper having been abandoned in the shape in which it stood, and having passed to his lordship's hands in an incomplete form, and by a more quick way, than it could have been lawfully forwarded to them, It could not have been transmitted regularly to Lord Minto but through the medium of Sir G. Barlow, and it may be fair to conclude, that it would have been so shaped in the intermediate passage, as to have lost its principal obnoxious features: but which are not in any view so striking as his lordship has fancied and represented them. If the grievances are stated in glowing colours, some allowance should have been made for aggravated feelings, and the language which they prompt, especially as there is no fixed rule, no scale, no boundary for a complaint. If the redress expected, like the complaint itself, should appear to be somewhat exaggerated, it is a redress, however, not self-sought by the army, but solicited at the hands of the governor-general, in rough, perhaps, but in honest terms.

If, as Lord Minto aigues, the memorial can be understood to aim at the removal of Sir G. Barlow from his government, for the causes assigned, and for the dangers apprehended by the army, it may be regarded as an unreasonable object, but not as a groundless or an unlawful one; considering the power to whom it is ad

dressed. The implied threat, in the concluding paragraph of the memorial, the governor general has himself excused, in saying that it is capable of a harmless interpretation.

One of the addresses to Major Boles has some censurable parts, but it is to be remarked that there was more than one address to that officer in circulation; and some of them are wholly exempt from the grand exception taken by Lord Minto and the governor of Fort St. George; and not one of them that will not allow a much more innocent construction, than has been put on it by the governor-general.

But if the statements in these papers were ever so unfounded and erroneous, or more objectionable than they are taken to be by Lord Minto, they will not justify, it is conceived, Sir G. Barlow's punishing the whole army, or such portion of it as he shall select, without legal evidence of their having subscribed to, or participated in the framing and circulating of the supposed criminal papers. The heinousness of any crime will not dispense with the necessity of proof, nor the forms of investigation and though the latter may be simplified in time of danger, it has never been contended till now, that, in any times, they may be altogether disregarded. But the governor-general, at the instant in which he is appealed to, in most earnest supplication, as the median of intercession in a case of great and alarming suffering, and which is stated to be so severe, as to be then almost unbearable, and if increased in its degree, is likely to exceed the measure of forbearance,denies the very existence of the wrongs of the army, and gives a sanction to the extension and repetition of the evils complained of, affirms and approves the practice, and promises the utmost of his countenance of arbitrary and summary suspension.

The letter of Lord Minto has been examined more particularly than was at first intended, for the purpose of answering some positions, on which both the governor-general and the subordinate government, and their respective advocates, have thought proper to rest their defence. Sir G. Barlow

pretended to attach so much consequence to this writing, that he ordered it to be printed and circulated in every corps throughout the army. Such an apparent deference was at least due to literary labours, complaisantly undertaken at his call.

The whole tenour of Lord Minto's letter is conformable to the policy of Sir G. Barlow, since it tends to cut off a hope of the intervention of the controuling power. Sir G. Barlow affects a surprise, that the harangue of his lordship, so flattering to himself, shoid not produce a correspondent sentiment in those to whom it is addressed The obstinacy of the army, in not acknowledging an authority so fortified, seems to have called forth the further energies of the governor to the maintenance of his first and darling project.

The honourable Colonel Sentleger, who was now at the presidency, and had begged in vain for a court martial. and who had laid the foundation of a civil suit against Sir G. Barlow in the supreme court, is ordered, on the shortest notice,to embark for Calcutta ; in despite of his protest against the act, depriving him, as he suggests, formally, of the means of pursuing the lawful redress of his injuries. He is hurried away, without being permitted to visit his late residence at Trichinopoly, whence he was ordered to fight the battles of the company. His local property, his public and his private papers, are of consequence left at the mercy of the government and strangers.

Major Boles, too, leading a retired and inoffensive life, in the vicinity of Madras, detained in India against his will, having been twice refused permission to proceed to Europe for the purpose of appealing to the court of directors, is at the same time ordered, also against his will, to proceed without delay to Bengal. Both of these officers are subjected, with the aggravated circumstances noted, to a double voyage, and double expense.

Much about the same time, Capt. Marshall is sent in the same direction from Vizagapatam, with almost every mark of ignominy attendant on the

removal of a state prisoner. Circumstances like these, were not wanting to inflame the military body from passive resistance to active aggression.

The army had further to notice the removal of a staff officer from the European regiment at Masulipatam, and another of the same corps to the command of a solitary and unhealthy garrison, at which no part of his regiment is quartered, for an alleged offence, utterly denied, and wholly uninvestigated. At the same instant, two large detachments from the same corps were ordered, under appearances the most equivocal, to act as marines on board his majesty's ships, a service from which the king's troops had been recently exempted, by the especial orders of his royal highness the Duke of York. These injudicious acts increase the general irritation, and induce the distinct bodies of the army to league together, without any concealment of their design, for the purpose, as it is declared, of resisting a further infringement of their rights. A correspon. dence is established between the different military stations, and committees are appointed to conduct it, as well as to arrange the general plan of operations. These, at first indefinite, assume in a short time the more determinate shape of organised resistance ; but, beyond this, the spirit of combination does not extend itself. In such confederacies, the step from passive measures to acts of a contrary description, is easily and almost imperceptibly made. The danger consists in moving or giving way to feelings, which, when once excited or indulged, hurry men through all the gradations of passion, from negative to positive crimes. In such a moment when authority is weak, it is in vain to imagine that morality sball supply its defect.

They who say that a soldier, under all contingencies, should command his passions, forget the frail nature of which he partakes, forget, also, the opposite sensibilities to which he is subjected, balanced in his, and every other heart, so nicely, and with so wise a care, that if one shall be subdued or agitated too much, the whole organ

becomes diseased, and ceases to fulfil the great design of providence, with the more narrow ends of political institutions. A soldier, without the same feelings that distinguish his fellow man, would appear to be not less untitled to perform the functions of his calling, than the ordinary offices of humanity. But this is not a place for enquiry into the communion or dependence of one passion or another, or of weighing, very scrupulously, the amount of error, from the consequences attending it, or the accidental condition of the ageni.

The most strict and zealous defender of military subordination, must admit, that the soldier's, like the obligations of others, has its prescribed boundary. The governments of India, and they seem to have carried their ideas of prerogative far enough, do not contend that military duty is without its limits; but, they would seem to have formed some extravagant opinions of it extent; their doctrine is in general correct, but the application, for the most part, erro

neous.

In Sir G. Barlow's eyes, all his acts wear the air of lawful authority, and those of the military body, of illegal opposition. The army, in his, and lord Minto's contemplation, have no grievances whatever, and having none, their representations and remonstrances are esteemed as so many captious and seditious proceedings, to which it would be weak and impolitic to yield.

The army, on the other hand, conceive themselves injured and oppressed, in the particulars before enumerated as the burthen of their complaints. If no alteration be worked in the sentiments of one of the parties, it is not to be hoped that any movement will be made towards the conciliation of differences, but that matters will be driven to extremities. Events, indeed, are hurrying on, one after another in quick succession, that would appear to exclude the idea of any other than the most melancholy conclusion to the subsisting misunderstanding.

Towards the end of the month of June, there can be no longer any doubt

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