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same moment, for the dismissal of the Adjutant and Deputy Adjutant General of the Army, for obedience to the authority of the repudiated Commander in Chief. The act of suspension of an officer of the latter rank, without the dull, cold, tedious, process of inquiry, was not considered to be singular enough, without giving him the company of his immediate staff. Cool deliberation and reflection, sanctioned by public opinion, might afterwards have advised, that the supposed injury of the Government might have been atoned by the punishment of the principal, without any visitation of the accessories, acting under the orders of their legitimate Head,, and in a known course. Such counsellors, and such advice, were not likely to intrude on the visions of proud and inflated superiority. It was only necessary, in the prevailing system of action, to issue commands, and to exact and enforce obedience.

To the orders of the 31st January and 1st of February, were added the subsequent ones of the 1st of May. We purposely pass over the mediate mandates, dismissing and dispersing a variety of officers from the Presidency, for the high crime and misde* Appendix M.

meanour of not privately admiring the society of the protegé of Government-Lieutenant Colonel Munro; as if the affections and courtesies of men were to be regulated by the tat of the drum. The last-mentioned orders, like the preceding, laid the defalcation in the duty of the army at the door of General Macdowall, who had been the cause, as it was insinuated, why any doubt was entertained of the supremacy of the civil Government, in military as well as general affairs;-a doubt that might have been the parent of the succeeding acts of insubordination, which these orders deprecated and punished. Happy had it been, if even at this date, though it had tardily presented itself, the idea had occurred, that as the guilt had been principally, nay, almost wholly assigned to the agency of the Commander in Chief, for the sake of the high example, the punishment might be confined to him. No; it was thought that the dignity of place was better consulted by adding a long list of names to the scroll of the proscribed.

It is difficult to view the conduct of the Government, just at this interval, without some compassion for its weakness.

Anxious to make a display of its greatness, it fell, as the correspondence shews, into the meanest arts for impressing it. Loth to discover any symptom of grace, at the commencement of the differences, it suspended, without any urgency, the Commander in Chief's staff; and when it perceived even that this measure produced a general disgust, instead of voluntarily repairing the apparent, or imagined injustice of the act, by a gracious restoration of the suspended officers to their former stations, it truckled and bargained with the only remaining gentleman on the spot, for the purchase of his restoration, at a price which he would not condescend to pay for it—the admission of a fault, of which he was unconscious. The reader will observe, that we are alluding to the coquetry, first of a Member of Council, and then of General Gowdie, in order to induce Major Boles to re-accept the office of Deputy Adjutant General, on the easy terms of an apology; which that very conscientious officer, though urged to it by numberless near and tender motives, had the magnanimity to disdain.

Beyond these orders, and some contrivances, not very remarkable for the

policy in which they originated, we have heard not of any active measures pursued to quell the rife spirit of discontent, or to obviate the ills that might possibly flow from it. On the devices, adopted on this occasion, we shall be excused from dwelling at any length. Though they were new, they are not very interesting; and though some of them were successful, the success does not seem to make amends for the sacrifice made of the principle in the means adopted for the attainment of it. The first of these was, the experiment (and how mortifying must have been the issue?) to ascertain how much the person of the Governor was held in disgust by the individual officers of the army. Hence proceeded the invitations, the rejected invitations, to the Government House, which men, rather than accept, abandoned eligible situations, lucrative employments, advantageous society — every thing but honorable sentiment-and exposed themselves, we blush to write it, to unhealthy and destructive climates, to comparative penury, and to the confinement of their own houses.

The next experiment, though somewhat later in point of time, was as complete

in its discovery, as the antecedent one, and perhaps equally as mortifying. This was made, through the medium of the test, directed to be administered to every officer in the army, which was the immediate cause of demonstrating, that the Governor, if possible, was as little regarded as the man. About 400 officers are said to have refused their subscription to the test, not so much, it is added, on account of the letter or spirit of the instrument, but the extreme obnoxious instructions with which it was accompanied, and of which every officer was duly informed, before he was desired to subscribe it. If it were the intention to obtain, generally, the signatures of officers to the test, which scarcely can be imagined, the manner of requiring it was the most clumsy, ungracious, and inefficient that could have been counselled. But we have not hitherto had the pleasure to observe one act of the Government blending any sign of grace, with the principle of authority.

There are one or two measures, indeed, that we shall take the liberty to mention here, which grew out of this unnatural state of things, though not exactly in the order of time in which we have hitherto con

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