Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

The relaxation of the severity of our penal code at home, during the last thirty years, however loudly called for by considerations of justice and humanity, has undoubtedly had a most pernicious influence on the class of convicts who have, during that period, been sent to the colonies. In so far as that change of system has diminished the frequency of the infliction of the punishment of death, and limited, practically speaking, that dreadful penalty to cases of wilful and inexcusable murder, it must command the assent of every benevolent and well-regulated mind. But, unfortunately, the change has not stopped there. It has descended through every department of our criminal jurisprudence, and come in that way to alter much for the worse the class of criminals who of late years have been sent to the penal colonies. The men who were formerly hanged are now for the most part transported; those formerly transported are now imprisoned; and those sent abroad have almost all, on repeated occasions, been previously confined, generally for a very long period. As imprisonment scarcely ever works any reformation on the moral character or habits of a prisoner, whatever improved skill in handicraft it may put into his fingers, this change has been attended with most serious and pernicious effect on the character of the convicts sent to the colonies, and gone far to produce the aversion with which they are now everywhere regarded.

It has been often observed, by those practically acquainted with the working of the transportation system in the colonies, that the Irish convicts were generally the best, and the Scotch, beyond all question, the worst who arrived. This peculiarity, so widely different from, in fact precisely the reverse of, what has been observed of the free settlers from these respective countries, in every part of the world, has frequently been made the subject of remark, and excited no little surprise. But the reason of it is evident, and, when once stated, perfectly satisfactory. The Scotch law, administered almost entirely by professional men, and on fixed principles, has long been based on the principle of transporting persons only who were deemed irreclaimable in this country. Very few have been sent abroad for half a century, from Scotland, who had not either committed some very grave offence, or been four or five times, often eight or ten times, previously convicted and imprisoned. In Ireland, under the moderate and lenient sway of Irish county justices, a poacher was often transported who had merely been caught with a hare tucked up under his coat. Whatever we may think of the justice of such severe punishments for trivial offences, in the first instance, there can be but one opinion as to its tendency to lead a much better class of convicts from the Emerald Isle, than the opposite system did from the shores of Caledonia. Very probably, also, the system of giving prisoners "repeated opportunities of amendment," as it is called in this country – but which, in fact, would be more aptly styled "renewed opportunities for depravity" – has, from good but mistaken motives, been carried much too far in Scotland. Be this as it may, nothing is more certain than that the substitution of a race of repeatedly convicted and hardened offenders, under the milder system of punishment in Great Britain, during the last twenty years, for one comparatively uninitiated in crime, such as were formerly sent out, has had a most pernicious effect on the character of the convicts received in the colonies, and the sentiments with which their arrival was regarded.

But by far the most powerful cause, which has been in operation for above a quarter of a century, in destroying the beneficial effects of the system of transportation, and substituting the worst possible consequences in their stead, has been the sending out of convicts in too great a proportion to the free population, and the consequent necessity for substituting the gang for the assignment system. This is a matter of the very highest, indeed of paramount importance; and it may safely be affirmed that, unless a remedy is found for it, all efforts made to render the system of transportation palatable to the colonies will prove nugatory. Fortunately the means of remedying that evil are not only easy, but, comparatively speaking, cheap, and perfectly efficacious; and they promise, while they remedy the above-mentioned evil, to confer, in other respects, signal benefits both on the colonies and the mother country.

New South Wales was originally selected, and not without sufficient reasons, as the place for the establishment of penal colonies, because the distance of it from the mother country, and the length of the voyage, rendered it a very difficult matter either for runaway convicts, or those who had served their time, to get home again. Once sent out, you were, in the great majority of cases, clear of them for ever. This circumstance was no disadvantage, but rather the reverse, to the colony, and certainly a very great advantage to the parent state, as long as the number of convicts annually sent out was inconsiderable, and the whole convict population formed a small minority to the number of free settlers. When the whole number committed a-year in England was 4500, and in Scotland under 100, as it was in Great Britain in 1804 or 1805, the settlement of convicts on the distant shores of Australia worked well. They were glad to get the 300 or 400 annually sent out; they were benefited by their forced labour; and the free settlers were in sufficient numbers to keep them with ease in subjection, and prevent their habits from contaminating those of the free inhabitants of the colony. But when the commitments from Great Britain and Ireland had risen to 50,000 or 60,000 a-year, and the convicts sent out to 3000 or 4000 annually, as they have done for some years past, the case was entirely altered. The polluted stream became much too large and powerful for the land it was intended to fertilise; it did more harm than good, and became the object of uniform and undisguised aversion.

The distance of Australia from the mother country, which formerly had been so great an advantage to both parties, now became the greatest possible evil; because it prevented, at the time this great influx of convicts was going on, the immigration of freemen from preserving anything like a due proportion to it. When the convicts rose to 2000 and 3000 yearly, the free settlers should have been raised to 8000 or 10,000 annually. This would have kept all right; because the tainted population would have been always in a small minority compared to the virtuous; order would have been preserved by the decided majority of the well-disposed; and the assignment system, the parent of so much good, still rendered practicable by the ceaseless extension of free settlers in the wilds of nature. But the distance of Australia rendered this impracticable, when the emigration of freemen was left to its own unaided resources. Steam navigation contributed powerfully to throw it into the back-ground for all but the very highest class of emigrants. The voyage to Australia is one of fourteen thousand miles; it takes from five to six months, must still be performed by sailing vessels, and costs about £16 a-head for the ordinary class of emigrants. That to America is one of three thousand miles; it takes from a fortnight to three weeks, is performed by great numbers of steam as well as sailing vessels, and costs from £3 to £4 a-head for the same class of passengers.[10 - While we write these lines, the following advertisement, which appeared in the Times of Oct. 10, will illustrate this vital difference: —"Emigration. – The undersigned are prepared to forward intending emigrants to every colony now open for colonisation, at the following rates of passage-money: – To Sydney, £15; Melbourne, £15; Adelaide, £15; Swan River, £20; Van Diemen's Land, £20; New Zealand, £18; Cape of Good Hope, £10; Natal, £10; California, £25; New York, £2, 10s.; Philadelphia, £2, 10s.; New Orleans, £3. – Harrison & Co. —11 Union Street, Birmingham."]

These facts are decisive, and must always continue so, against the choice of Australia, as the place of their destination, by the great bulk of ordinary emigrants. Several young men of good family, indeed, tempted by the high profits generally made there in the wool trade, and the boundless facilities for the multiplication of flocks which its prairies afforded, have settled there, and some have done well. But of ordinary labourers, and persons to do the work of common workmen, there has always been felt a very great deficiency, for this simple reason, that they could not afford the expense of the voyage. The settlers were almost entirely of the better class, and they were in no proportion at all to the number of the convicts. This distinctly appears, not only from the extravagant wages paid to shepherds and common labourers, generally not less than five or six shillings a-day, but from the very limited number of emigrants, even during the distress of the last three years, when the voluntary emigration had reached two hundred and fifty thousand annually from the British islands, who have gone to our colonies in New South Wales.[11 - Emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and New Zealand: —– Porter's Parliamentary Tables, 1846, p. 236.]

This unhappy turn of affairs has been attended with a double disadvantage. In the first place, the vast increase in the number of convicts sent to Sydney, compared with the small number of free settlers, has for a long time past rendered the continuance of the assignment system impossible; and the gang system, to take off and embody the surplus numbers, became in a manner a matter of necessity. The manners of the colony, its habits, its prospects, its morality, have been seriously damaged by this change. The emancipated convicts who have made money, known by the name of "canary birds," have pressed upon the heels, and come to excite the jealousy, of the free settlers. The accumulation of convicts in the lower walks of life has checked the immigration of free labour, perpetuated the frightful inequality of the sexes, and led to the most lamentable disorders. The gang system, of necessity introduced, because free settlers did not exist to take the convicts off under the assignment system, perpetuated in the colony the vices of the hulks, the depravity of the galleys. The whole benefits of transportation to the convicts, their whole chances of amendment, are lost, when, instead of being sent to rural labour in the solitude of the woods and the prairies, they are huddled together, in gangs of four or five hundred, without hope to counterbalance evil propensities, or inducement to resist the seduction of mutual bad example. These evils were so sensibly felt, and led to such energetic representations to the government at home, that at length the colony was pacified, but at the same time its progress checked, by an order in council in 1837, that no more convicts, for a limited time, should be sent to Sydney or its dependencies.

But this only shifted the seat of the evil, and augmented its intensity. The convicts, now swelled to above four thousand a-year, could not be kept at home; they required to be sent somewhere, and where was that place to be? Van Diemen's Land was selected, being the most southernly portion of New Holland, and of course the farthest removed from this country; and thither nearly the whole convicts of Great Britain and Ireland, soon above thirty-five hundred annually in number, were sent for several years. The consequence of this prodigious influx of criminals into an infant colony, so far removed from the parent state that it cost £20 a-head to send a common labourer there – and of course no free emigration in proportionate numbers could be expected without public aid – might easily have been anticipated. Government did nothing to encourage the simultaneous settlement of free settlers in that distant land, thus flooded with convicts, or so little as amounted to nothing. The consequence was, that, ere long, three-fifths of the inhabitants of the colony were convicts. Every one knows, none could have failed to anticipate the consequences. The morals of the settlement, thus having a majority of its inhabitants convicts, were essentially injured. Crimes unutterable were committed; the hideous inequality of the sexes induced its usual and frightful disorders; the police, how severe and vigilant soever, became unable to coerce the rapidly-increasing multitude of criminals; the most daring fled to the woods, where they became bush-rangers; life became insecure; property sank to half its former value. So powerful, and evidently well-founded, were the representations made on the subject to the legislature, that it became evident that a remedy must be applied; and this was done by an order in council in 1844, which suspended entirely for two years the transportation of male convicts to the colonies. That of females was still and most properly continued, in the hope that, by doing so, the inequality of the sexes in Australia might in some degree be corrected.

But this measure, like all the rest, not being founded on the right principle, has entirely failed. The accumulation of offenders in the British islands, from the stoppage of the usual vent by which they were formerly carried off, soon became insupportable. The jails were crowded to suffocation; it was ere long found to be necessary to liberate many persons, transported seven years, at the expiration of two, to make way for new inmates. The liberated convicts were soon back in their old haunts, and at their old practices; and the great increase of serious crimes, such as robberies, burglaries, and murders, demonstrated that the public morals in the great towns were rapidly giving way, under the influence of that worst species of criminals – returned convicts. The judges both of Great Britain and Ireland, in common with every person practically acquainted with the subject, and who had daily proofs, in the discharge of their important official duties, of the total failure of the imprisonment system, were unanimous in recommending a return to transportation. All the temporary expedients adopted, such as Gibraltar, Bermuda, &c., soon failed from the rapid increase of convicts, who greatly exceeded all the means left of taking them off. Government became convinced that they had made a step in the wrong direction; and they most wisely took counsel from experience, and determined to resume the practice of sending convicts abroad. But, on the threshold of the renewed attempt, they were met by the refusal of the colonies to take them. The Cape is almost in rebellion on the subject; and in despair of finding a willing colony, it is said they have in contemplation to send them to be roasted under the White Cliffs, and increase the already redundant population of Malta.

It is not necessary to do any such thing. The solution of the transportation question is easy, the method to be followed perfectly efficacious. Government have only to commence the discharge of one of their most important social duties to get rid of all their difficulties, and render the immigration of criminals, as it was in time past, as great a blessing to the colonies, and as ardently desired, as of late years it has been a curse, and earnestly deprecated.

Transportation is a blessing to a colony when the convicts are kept in a minority, perhaps in a fourth or a fifth of the community to which they are sent, and when they are not hardened in crime, and all instructed in some useful trade. In such circumstances, they are the greatest possible addition to its strength, riches, and progress, and will always be gladly received.

Transportation is a curse when the convicts sent out are so numerous, and the free settlers so few, that the former forms a large proportion of the community compared to the latter, and when their habits are those of hardened irreclaimable criminals, instead of youthful novices in crime. If they become a majority, certain ruin may be anticipated to the colony thus flooded with crime.

The difficulties which now beset the transportation question have all arisen from our having pursued a course, of late years, which rendered the settlement of convicts a curse instead of a blessing, as it was at first, when the system was directly the reverse. To render it a blessing again, we have only to restore the circumstances which made it so formerly – sending out the convicts when not completely hardened in depravity, and in such a proportion to the free settlers as to keep them a small minority to the free and untainted part of the community. The immigration of convicts to our colonies is like that of the Irish into western Britain: everything depends on the proportion they bear to the remainder of the population. They are very useful if a fourth; they can be borne if they are a third; but let them become a majority, and they will soon land the country in the condition of Skibbereen or Connemara.

We cannot diminish the numbers of convicts transported; on the contrary, woful results have made us aware that it should be materially increased. Experience has taught us, also, that voluntary unaided emigration cannot enable the free settlers in Australia to keep pace with the rapid increase of crime in the British islands. What, then, is to be done? The answer is simple: Discharge in part the vast duty, so long neglected by government, of providing, at the public expense, for the emigration of a certain portion of the most indigent part of the community, who cannot get abroad on their own resources, and SETTLE THEM IN THE SAME COLONY WITH THE CONVICTS. Do this, and the labour market is lightened at home; the convicts are kept in a small minority abroad; the colony, thus aided by the combined virtue and penal labour of the mother country, is secured of prosperity and rapid progress; and its rate of increase will soon induce the other colonies to petition for a share of the prolific stream.

At present, there are, or at least should be, above 5000 criminals annually transported from the British islands.[12 - Sentenced to be transported —] The cost of settling a free labourer in Australia is about £16 a-head. To send 16,000 free labourers with these 5000 criminals would cost just £256,000 a-year: call it £300,000 yearly, to make room for the probable increase of criminals, from the growing necessities or depravity of the mother country, and provide for the extra and unavoidable expenses of an infant establishment, and the transportation question is at once solved, a great relief is afforded to the distressed labourers of the parent state, and a certain market for our manufactures provided, which will double every two or three years, as long as the system is continued.

Let government, by an order in council, propose these terms to the colonies, and we shall see if any of them will refuse them. If none will close with them, let them at once establish a new colony on these principles, in some unoccupied part of New Holland. In twelve months, there will be a race for who is to get a share of the fertilising stream. Sixteen thousand free settlers, and five or six thousand convicts, annually sent to any colony, would cause its numbers to double every two, and its prosperity to triple in value every three years. Everything would go on in a geometrical progression. It would soon rival California in progress and reputation. Capital would rapidly follow this scene of activity and progress. Moneyed men are not slow in discovering where labour is plentiful and comparatively cheap, and where their investments are doubled in amount and value every two or three years. A colony thus powerfully supported by the parent state would soon distance all its competitors: while the Cape, New Zealand, and Australia were slumbering on with a population doubling every ten years, from the tardy and feeble support of free emigrants on their own resources, the establishment thus protected would double in two or three. Voluntary emigrants would crowd to the scene of activity, progress, and opulence. The 20,000 persons annually sent out would immediately become consumers of our manufactures to the extent of £150,000 a-year:[13 - At the rate of £7, 14s. a-head – the present rate in Australia.] and this rate would be doubled the very next year! At the end of five or six years, it would amount to £800,000 or £900,000 annually. What a relief at once to the manufacturers of Great Britain, now labouring so severely under the combined effect of foreign competition and a declining home market, and the starving peasantry of Ireland, where half a million of stout labourers – admirable workmen in a foreign country, though wretched ones in their own – are pining in hopeless destitution, a burden upon their parishes, or flocking in ruinous multitudes to Liverpool and Glasgow.

But where is the £300,000 to come from? The Chancellor of the Exchequer has no money; taxation has reached its limits; and loans are out of the question. What! have free trade and a restricted currency, then, so quickly prostrated the resources of the country, that the nation which, in 1813, with eighteen millions of inhabitants, at the close of a twenty years' costly war, raised £72,000,000 by taxation, and £80,000,000 by loan, cannot now, with thirty millions, for so very important an object, after thirty-three years of unbroken peace, muster up £300,000 a-year? A shilling a gallon on the 6,259,000 gallons of whisky annually consumed in Scotland alone, in demoralising the community, would provide the requisite sum, and tend to equalise the ruinous exemption which Scotland now enjoys in the manufacture of that attractive and pernicious liquor. A similar duty on the 12,000,000 gallons annually consumed in England, would raise double the sum. But if government, despite the £100,000,000 we were promised by free trade, cannot afford £300,000 a-year for this vital object, let it be laid on the counties as part of the prison or county rates. A little reflection would soon show every person of sense in the country, that its amount could speedily be saved in prison and poor rates.

Simultaneously with this change, an alteration, equally loudly called for, should take place in the administration of our criminal law at home. The present system of inflicting short imprisonments at first, and reserving long imprisonments and transportation for criminals who have plied their trade of pillage for two or three years, should be abolished. Imprisonment should consist of three kinds: – 1. A very short imprisonment, perhaps of a week or ten days, for the youngest criminals and a first trifling offence, intended to terrify merely. 2. For a second offence, however trivial – or a first, if considerable, and indicating an association with professional thieves – a long imprisonment of nine months or a year, sufficient to teach every one a trade, should invariably be inflicted. 3. The criminal who has been thus imprisoned, and taught a trade, should, when next convicted, be instantly transported. In this way a triple advantage would be gained. 1. The immense number of prisoners now constantly in confinement in the British islands would be materially lessened, and the prison-rates proportionally relieved. 2. The cost of now maintaining a convict in one of the public penitentiaries, to prepare him for transportation, not less than £17 or £18, would be almost entirely saved; he would be prepared for it, in the great majority of cases, by his previous imprisonment. 3. The character and habits of the convicts sent out would be materially improved, by getting comparatively young and untainted men for penal labour, instead of old offenders, who have learned no other trade than that of thieving. To the country it would undoubtedly save £60 or £80 on each criminal transported, by removing him at the commencement of his career, when his reformation was possible, instead of waiting till its close, when he had lived for three or four years in flash-houses and prisons at the public expense, paid in depredations or prison rates, and acquired nothing but habits which rendered any change of character abroad difficult, if not impossible. The prisons would become, instead of mere receptacles of vice, great houses of industry, where the most dangerous and burdensome part of our population would be trained for a life of industry and utility in the colonies.

For a similar reason, the great object in poor-houses, houses of refuge, hospitals, and other institutions where the destitute poor children are maintained at the public expense, or that of foundations bequeathed by the piety of former times, should be to prepare the young of both sexes, by previous education, for the habits and duties of colonists; and, when they become adults, to send them abroad at the expense of the public or the institution. Incalculable would be the blessings which would ensue, both to the public morals and the public expenditure, from the steady adoption of this principle. It is a lamentable fact, well known to all practically acquainted with this subject, that a large proportion of the orphan or destitute boys, educated in this manner at the public expense, in public institutions, become thieves, and nearly all the girls prostitutes. It could not be otherwise with young creatures of both sexes, turned out without a home, relation, or friend, shortly after the age of puberty, into the midst of an old and luxurious community, overloaded with labour, abounding in snares, thickly beset with temptations. Removed to Australia, the Cape, or Canada, they might do well, and would prove as great a blessing in those colonies, where labour is dear, women wanted, and land boundless, as they are a burden here, where labour is cheap, women redundant, and land all occupied. Every shilling laid out in the training the youth of both sexes in such situations, for the duties of colonial life, and sending them to it when adults, would save three in future prison or poor rates. A pauper or criminal, costing the nation £15 or £20 a-year, would be converted into an independent man living on his labour, and consuming £7 or £8 worth yearly of the manufactures of his native country.

The number of emigrants who now annually leave the British shores, is above 250,000![14 - Viz.: – 1847, 258,000; 1848, 248,000; 1849, understood to be still larger. —Parliamentary Reports.] No such migration of mankind is on record since the days when the Goths and Vandals overthrew the Roman empire, and settled amidst its ruins. It might naturally have been supposed that so prodigious a removal of persons, most of them in the prime of life, would have contributed in a material degree to lighten the market of labour, and lessen the number of persons who, by idleness or desperation, are thrown into habits of crime. But the result has been just the reverse; and perhaps nothing has contributed so powerfully to increase crime, and augment destitution among the labouring classes of late years, as this very emigration. The reason is evident. It is for the most part the wrong class which has gone abroad. It is the employer, not the employed; the holders of little capitals, not the holders of none. Left to its own unaided resources, emigration could be undertaken only by persons possessed of some funds to pay their passage. It took £100 to transport a family to Australia; £20 or £30 to America. The destitute, the insolvent, the helpless, could not get away, and they fell in overwhelming and crushing multitudes on the parish funds, county rates, and charity of the benevolent at home. Labour became everywhere redundant, because so many of the employers of labour had gone away. The grand object for all real lovers of their country now, should be to induce government or the counties to provide means for the emigration, on a large scale, of destitute labourers, chained by their poverty to the soil. About 150,000 persons have annually emigrated from Ireland for the last three years, carrying with them above half its agricultural capital; and the consequence is, that in many districts the land is uncultivated, and the banknotes in circulation, which, in 1846, were £7,500,000, have sunk in August 1849 to £3,833,000![15 - See Dublin University Magazine, October 1849, p. 372.] The small cultivators, the employers of the poor, have disappeared, and with them their capital – leaving only to the owners of land a crowd of starving, unemployed labourers, to consume their rents. A million of such starving labourers now oppress the industry of Ireland. Such is the result of agitation at home, and free trade in emigration abroad. The American papers tell us, that each of these starving Irishmen, if strong and healthy, is worth 1000 dollars to the United States. Free-trade emigration can never send them out – it can transport only those who can pay. A large increase of penal emigration, coupled with such a proportionate influx, at the public expense, of free settlers, as would prevent it from becoming an evil, at once solves the transportation question, and is the first step in the right direction in that of Emigration.

MY PENINSULAR MEDAL

BY AN OLD PENINSULAR

PART I. – CHAPTER I

On the evening of the 13th of February last, I was sitting in my library, at my residence in – Square, when a double knock at the door announced the postman. Betty presently entered, bringing, not as I anticipated, a letter or two, but a small packet, which evidently excited her curiosity, as it did mine.

The first thing upon the said packet that caught my eye was a large seal of red wax – the royal arms! – then, above the direction, "On Her Majesty's service!" – just beneath, the word, "Medal!" Yes, the medal that I had earned five-and-thirty years before, in the hard-fought fight on the hill of Toulouse – long expected, it was come at last! And, let me tell you, a very handsome medal, too; well designed, well executed; and accompanied with a very civil letter, from that old soldier, and true soldier's friend, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the military secretary. This letter being, no doubt, precisely the same as hundreds of "Old Peninsulars" have by this time received, I presume I am guilty of no breach of confidence in here transcribing it for the benefit of my readers: —

"Horse-Guards, 31st January 1849.

"Sir, – I am directed by the Commander-in-Chief to transmit to you the Medal and Clasps graciously awarded to you by her Majesty under the general order of the first of June 1847. I have the honour to be, &c.

    "Fitzroy Somerset."

As I never attempt to describe my own feelings, except such as are describable, I shall not relate what I now felt on the receipt of this much desired, anxiously expected medal. But this I will say; – long live the Queen! long live Queen Victoria! God bless her! Oh, it was a kind thought: it was a gracious act. It comes to cheer the heart of many an old soldier, and of many a middle-aged gentleman like myself, who got nothing but honour and aching bones for his share in the Peninsular glories; and now has something that he can add to the archives of his family, and leave to those who come after him. "Graciously awarded to you by her Majesty: " Yes; and I feel it as much so, as if her Majesty's own gracious hands had placed it in mine. And, if ever she wants defenders, so long as this arm can wield – but enough: romance would be out of place.

After the delivery of the medals had been proceeding for some time, I was coming, one morning, out of the Horse-Guards, when I met old Major Snaffle, who had just got his. The major belongs to that class who are known in the army by the name of "grumblers;" and, having been knocked down by the wind of a shot at the Trocadero, having been brought away in the last boat but nineteen from Corunna, having seen the battle of Salamanca from the top of a tree, having been seized with the ague but an hour before the storming of Badajoz, having again been very ill in the south of France from eating unripe grapes, having regularly drawn his pay and allowances, and never having been absent from his regiment on sick leave when he could not get it, now justly deems himself a very ill-used man, because more has not been done for him. "Well, major," said I, "I wish you joy. So you have got your medal at last." "Yes," growled the major, or rather grunted, "at last I have got it. Long time, though, six-and-thirty years – long time to wait for half-a-crown."

My own profession, at present, is very different from that of arms. Nor can I presume, having been in but one general action, to rank with those brave old fire-eaters of the Peninsular army, whose medals with many clasps – bar above bar – tell of six, seven, eight, critical combats or more, in which they took a part under the illustrious Wellington, in Portugal, in Spain, in the south of France. By the bye, how I should like to see the Duke's own medal! What a lot of bars HE must have! – what a glorious ladder, step rising above step in regular succession, when he sits down to soup in his field-marshal's coat! But I was going to say – to return from great things to small – so far from being able to claim high military honours for myself, though serving under his Grace's orders in the Peninsular war, I was not there at all in a strictly military capacity. Yet as, from this very circumstance, I had opportunities of seeing scenes, characters, and incidents, connected with the British army, of a different kind from those described by other writers on the subject, I am induced, by the arrival of my medal, to place on record a short narrative of my personal adventures in the Peninsula and south of France.

Yet, ere I commence the yarn, a word, one word, for the honoured dead. Many, who came home safe from the Peninsula, fell at Waterloo. Others were borne from the western ports of Europe across the Atlantic, to be marks for Kentucky riflemen and New England bushfighters. Of the survivors, multitudes upon multitudes have gradually dropped off; and those who now remain, of the legions that conquered at Vimeira, at Vittoria, and at Orthes, to receive her Majesty's gracious gift, are probably fewer in number than those who are gone. One "Old Peninsular" I have heard of, in whose own family and connexions, had all lived, there would have been fourteen or fifteen claimants of the medal. He is now, if he still survives, the only one left. In my own connexions we should have made seven; and now, besides myself, there remains only one venerable uncle, who is comfortably located in a snug berth in Canada. There was my honoured father, who received the thanks of parliament for his services at Corunna, and pounded the French batteries at Cadiz. There was my cousin, Tom Impett, of the 53d, whom I found with a musket-ball in his leg two days after the battle of Toulouse, in a house full of wounded men and officers. He died in Canada. There was another venerable uncle, as kind an uncle as ever breathed, and as honest a man as ever lived. He died, to his honour, far from rich, after having been personally responsible for millions upon millions of public money, the sinews of war, all paid away in hard cash for our Peninsular expenses. He was generally known at headquarters by a comical modification of his two Christian names. There was Captain, afterwards Colonel B – , of the Royal Engineers, a quiet, mild-tempered man, with military ardour glowing in his breast – the man of education and the gentleman. We met near the platform of St Cyprien; and he had the kindness to entertain me with a calm disquisition on the fight, while we were both in the thick of it. He had his share of professional employment in the Peninsular sieges, and got a bad wound or two; but lived to fortify Spike Island, and was at length lost at sea. And then there was colonel H – , who commanded a Portuguese brigade with the rank of brigadier-general – an extraordinary composition of waggery, shrewdness, chivalry, and professional talent. He came down to Lisbon while I was there, on his way to England, quite worn out with hard service and the effect of his wounds, or, as he told us himself, "unripped at every seam." He died not many days after, on his passage to England.

Now for myself. I commenced keeping my terms at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1809, the seventeenth of my age. A college life was not altogether my own choice; for nearly all the males of my family, for three generations, had served or were serving their country either in the army, navy, or marines, to the number of some ten or twelve; and I myself had always looked forward to wearing the king's uniform. Moreover, as the Peninsular war had already commenced when I went to college, and I had learned at school the use of the broadsword and small sword, had been drilled, and could handle a musket, my thoughts often turned to military scenes, especially when I read in the daily journals of victories won, first by Sir Arthur Wellesley, then by Lord Wellington. But, once at Cambridge, I caught the fever of academic emulation. My cousin B – (brother of the Captain B – above mentioned,) had been senior wrangler, and had given me some useful hints as to the mode of reading with effect; I read hard, obtained a Trinity scholarship in my first year, first class the same year, ditto the second year, and stood fair for a place among the wranglers. But now my health broke; not, however, from hard living, but from hard study. I was compelled to give up; and, not choosing to read for a middling degree after having been booked for a high one, determined to go out among the hoys. Now my penchant for military adventure returned with full force. I was miserably out of health, with an excellent constitution – in proof of which I always found that I lost ground by nursing, but gained by a rough open-air life. A campaign or two would be just the thing for me. And I beg to offer this suggestion to growing young gentlemen who are sickly, and consequently hipped, as I was. If, with rough living – that is, with much moving about, and constant exposure to the atmosphere – you grow worse, I can give you no comfort; you are a poor creature, take all the care of yourself you can. But if, with the same kind of life, you grow better, stronger, stouter, heartier, saucier, depend upon it, you have some stamina. This was my case. I saw that a sedentary life was not the life I was made for; an active life was the life for me; and my thoughts dwelt more and more on the Peninsula. I rubbed up my French, procured a Gil Blas in Spanish, ditto in Portuguese, a Portuguese and a Spanish grammar, and, for a sick man, made wonderful progress in all the three languages.

But, alas! there was a hitch. I was an only son, and an only child – intended for the law! My dear father had already made me a present, while at school, of Fortescue De Laudibus; and I had already gobbled up a portion of that excellent work – for I was always an omnivorous reader – and had digested it too. And then what would my dear mother say, if I talked to her about going to be shot at for the benefit of my health? It was a delicate point to manage, and how to manage it I knew not.

In the long vacation of 1812, which closed my third year at Trinity College, Cambridge, I brought matters to an explanation. My father's ship, the – , 74, was then in the Downs, and we had lodgings on Walmer beach. I stated my desire to enter the army, and my firm conviction that nothing else would restore my shattered constitution. But my father was inflexible, my mother answered all my arguments, and I saw that I had no chance.

But when one way of gaining an object fails, another sometimes presents itself. My two uncles, of whom I have spoken, were already in the Peninsula, both of them in the same department, the senior at the head of it, with the privilege of occasionally nominating his own clerks. Their friends in England heard from them now and then; and I saw a letter from my senior uncle to a particular old crony of his own, who had influential connexions, asking him why he did not come out to the army with the rank of A. D. P. M. G.,[16 - For the benefit of the uninitiated, assistant-deputy-paymaster-general; A. A. D. P. M. G., acting-assistant-deputy-paymaster-general; a long title, but not so long, by four syllables, as that of the letter-carrier of a certain German war-office – Ober-kriegsversammlungrathsverhandlungpapieraufhebergehülfe.] instead of staying at home, and eating roast pig for supper.

Like all the hipped, a miserable race, I was constantly thinking about myself; and now a happy thought struck me. As to parliamentary interest, to be sure I had none. Besides, being under one-and-twenty, I was not of an age to aspire to an officer's rank, in a department of so much responsibility as the paymaster-general's; therefore, the above standing of assistant-deputy, which put an epaulet on the shoulder at once, was not to be thought of. But then, if Buonaparte would only have the kindness to keep us in hot water two or three years longer, I might rise to the said rank by previous good conduct in the office of clerk, and that my uncle could get me at once.

I again broke ground with my honoured parents. My father assured me that, if I went to Lisbon, where he had been stationed with his ship, I should find it a hell upon earth: though I afterwards learned that he had contrived to spend a tolerably happy life there. "And as to your being attached to headquarters, and following the movements of the army, I," said he, "have seen quite enough of service ashore to be able to tell you that you will be soon sick of that." But, to cut the story short, my dear mother now began to incline to my view of the subject. To be sure a clerkship was not exactly what they had thought of for me – but it might lead to something better – no man's education was complete without a tour on the Continent – the usual tour through France, Italy, and the south of Germany, was rendered impossible by the war – and where, in all Europe, could a young man travel, except in Spain and Portugal? Fighting, and paying those who fought, were different things – I might keep out of the way of bullets, and yet contrive to see the world. In short, these arguments prevailed. A letter was written out to my uncle, begging him to write a letter to the head office in London, nominating me as one of his clerks for Peninsular service. I went back to Cambridge, attacked Spanish and Portuguese with renewed ferocity, took my degree of A. B., and returned home in the early part of 1813, just in time to meet a letter from the best of uncles, stating that he had written to the home authorities, and was anxiously expecting my valuable assistance in the Peninsula.

Nothing was now wanting but the nomination from London. That anxious month! Morning after morning I watched for the postman's knock; and, at every such summons, it was myself that opened the door to him. But great bodies move slowly, and official dignity delights to announce itself by tardiness of action. At length the wished-for communication arrived; a letter, "On His Majesty's Service," of no common magnitude; a seal of correspondent amplitude; and an intimation, in terms of stately brevity, that I was appointed a clerk of the military chest attached to the Peninsular army, and was to attend at the office in London to receive my instructions.

During that month the bustle of preparation, in our usually quiet domicile, had been immense. Stockings sufficient to set up a Cheapside hosier, shirts enough for a voyage to India, flannel commensurate with a visit to the North Pole – everything, in short, that could be thought of, was prepared for the occasion with kind and provident care. I said farewell, reached London, reported myself, got my orders and an advance, booked my place for Falmouth, and found myself the same evening a passenger to Exeter by the fast coach.

In those times, the journey from London to Falmouth by the fast coach was a light off-hand affair of two nights and two days. We reached Exeter on the second night, and there I was allowed the indulgence of three hours' bed, till the Falmouth coach was ready to start. As part of the said three hours was occupied in undressing and dressing, and part also in saying my prayers, I entered the new vehicle far more disposed for sleep than for conversation. But there I found, to my consternation, a very chatty passenger, perfectly fresh! He was a man of universal information – in short, a talented individual, and an intellectual character; had his own ideas upon morals, politics, theology, physics, metaphysics, and general literature; was particularly anxious to impart them; and was travelling to obtain orders in the rum and hollands line. Ah, what a night was that! Oh the dismal suffering which a prosy talker inflicts on a weary head! Of all nuisances, the most unconscious is the bore. I do think the Speaker of the House of Commons is the most ill-used man in the three kingdoms. Reflect: he must not only hear – he must listen! And then think what a time! – hour after hour, and day after day! For a period amounting, in the aggregate, to no small portion of the life of man, must that unfortunate victim of British institutions sit and hearken to

"Now a louder, now a weaker,
Now a snorter, now a squeaker;
How I pity Mr Speaker!"

Some portion of such suffering I myself was now compelled to endure, by my communicative friend in the Falmouth coach. To be sure, it was only a single proser; but then there was variety in one. He commenced by a few remarks on the weather, by which he introduced a disquisition on meteorology. He then passed, by an easy transition, to the question of secondary punishments; glanced at the theory of gravitation; dwelt for some time on heraldry; touched on hydrostatics; was large on logarithms; then digressed on the American war; proposed emendations of our authorised version; discussed the Neptunian theory; and at length suspended his course, to inform me that I was decidedly the most agreeable fellow-traveller he had ever met with. The fact is, I was sitting up all this time in the corner of the coach, in a state of agony and indignation indescribable, meditating some mode of putting a stop to the annoyance, and mentally seeking a solution to the question – What right has a very stupid person to make your brain a thoroughfare for his stupid ideas, especially when you would particularly like to go to sleep? He mistook my silence for attention, and thought he was appreciated. This went on till daylight – continued to breakfast-time – proceeded during breakfast – ceased not when we had re-entered the coach-talk, talk, talk, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis– still the same stream of stuff. That long, that dreary journey from Exeter to Falmouth! The soft lull of somnolency came at length to my relief; and I began to nod my assent, much to my tormentor's gratification. But presently I was dead asleep; and, most unfortunately, my head dropped forward into the pit of his stomach. The breath, knocked out of his body, escaped with a gasp, like an Indian's "ugh!" In a moment I was broad awake, and made a thousand apologies, which he politely accepted, and renewed the thread of his discourse. Again, I dropped off; and again my head dropped forward. Another "ugh!" another ocean of apologies, another resumption of the endless yarn. The other passengers, two sedate and remarkably silent gentlemen of Falmouth, in broad-brimmed hats and drab coats of a peculiar cut, had each his weather-eye open, and began to enjoy the joke amazingly. Gradually, once more, the incessant clack subsided in my ears to a pleasing hum; I was off; the cervical, dorsal, and lumbar muscles once more lost their tension beneath the narcotic influence of incessant sound; and my drowsy head gave a pitch as before, with the same results – "ugh!" – apologies unlimited – ditto accepted – and more yarn. The Quakers – I beg their pardon, the "Friends" – are, you must know, eminently humourists. This, please to take notice, arises from their superior intelligence, and high degree of mental culture; the result of which is high susceptibility. You might now have seen, in our two fellow-travellers in the Falmouth coach, what you would see nowhere but in their "connexion" – two men ready to die of laughing, and each looking as grave as a judge. For a few miles it went on. Talk – sleep – head pitched into bread-basket – "ugh!" – pungent and profound regrets – regrets accepted – talk recommenced – and so on with a perpetual da capo. At length the most gifted of gratuitous lecturers began to perceive that he was contributing to the amusement of the party in a way that he had not intended, and grew indignant. But I pacified him, as we drove into Falmouth, by politely soliciting a card of his house; stepped out of the coach into the coffee-room of the hotel, out of the coffee-room into bed as soon as it was ready, and made up for two sleepless nights by not coming down to breakfast till two o'clock the next day.

The Lisbon packet was not to sail for a week. My extra baggage arrived in due time by the heavy; and I occupied the interval, as best I could, in a pedestrian survey of the environs of Falmouth, walks to Truro, Pendennis Castle, &c. I was much delighted with clouted cream, and gave the landlady an unlimited order always to let me have a john dory for dinner, when there was one in the market. N.B. – No place like Falmouth for john dories. Clouted cream always ask for, when you go into the West – very good with tea, not bad with coffee; and mem., unimpeachable with apple-pie.

The packet, that was to have the honour of conveying me from Falmouth to Lisbon, was a little tub of a gun-brig, yclept the Princess Wilhelmina. Judging from her entire want of all the qualities requisite for the service on which she was employed, I presume she must have obtained the situation through some member of parliament. Her captain was laid up with the gout; and we were to be commanded by the mate, who turned out to be a Yankee, and an ugly customer; but more of him anon. At the same hotel where I had established my habitat, was a military party, three in number, waiting, like myself, for the sailing of the packet; yet not, like myself, men fresh in the service, but all three regular "Peninsulars" – men who had returned on leave from the British army, and were now about to join, in time for the opening of the campaign. They had established themselves in a front drawing-room on the first floor, seemed very fond of music, and had good voices. But as they always sang together, and each sang his own song, it was not easy to determine the vocal powers of each. The coffee-room was quite good enough for me; and there I had the honour of forming the acquaintance of another fellow-voyager that was to be – a partner in a large London house in the Manchester line, whom, to avoid personality, I beg leave to distinguish by the name of Gingham. He had many of the peculiarities of Cockneyism, and some that were entirely his own; but I found him a very pleasant companion, and we perambulated the town and neighbourhood in company.

CHAPTER II

My first chapter brought me, on my way to Portugal, as far as the Royal Hotel, Falmouth. At this stage of my travels, I must beg to detain the reader for a short space; for here it is that I may be said to have had my seasoning; here, in fact, I obtained my first introduction to military society, and to military life, as it prevailed at the British headquarters in the Peninsula. This advantage I gained by falling in with the party of "Peninsulars" already mentioned, who were on their way out, like myself. I must also make my readers better acquainted with my friend Gingham, whom I hope they will not dislike on further knowledge. Gingham and I afterwards campaigned in company. I must premise that he had a touch of romance; and, as I afterwards discovered, had not been brought up as a merchant.

It was the early spring of 1813: a year big with events of import to Spain, to France, to England, and, in fact, to the whole of Europe. On leaving London by the fast coach, we had bowled away over frozen roads. But at Falmouth, the trees were budding in the hedgerows, the sun was shining, the birds were singing; while the soft air stole gently by, and, whispering, sportively saluted us as it passed, like some coy nymph invisible – that idea was Gingham's – the sky was clear, and the haze danced in the sunshine on the distant hills – Gingham again. Towards the afternoon, it generally fell calm. The capacious harbour, smooth as glass, though gently undulating at its entrance, with the swell of the Atlantic that rolled lazily in, bore on its bosom not only the tub-like Princess Wilhelmina and her Yankee mate, but many a noble vessel of ampler tonnage, that showed no water-line in the transparent and silent mirror on which it floated, and seemed to hang suspended between earth and heaven, motionless in the sun-lit and misty ether.

A very odd fish was that Gingham. We enjoyed our walks amazingly. He was going out to Lisbon in a large way, on a mission of mercantile speculation, with full authority from his firm to do anything and everything, whether in the way of contracts for the army, buying up commissariat bills, engaging in monetary transactions, or, above all – for that was his chief object – forming a Peninsular connexion, and opening a new market for British goods. His was, indeed, a voyage of enterprise and of discovery; not, however, his first. His manners were precise. He was a higgler in little things, but had large ideas, and lots of gentlemanly feeling. Like many other Cockneys of those days, he was always dressed, and always conscious of being dressed. His hat was white, with the exception of the interior green of the brim, which matched with his spectacles. His gloves were white, his unmentionables were white, and so was his waistcoat. His white cravat was tied before in a sort of pilot-balloon, or white rosicrucian puff. His hair also was pomatum'd, and powdered white. His very pigtail, all but the narrow silk ribbon that held it together, was white. His coat was not white, but a light pepper-and-salt, approaching to white. On the whole, there was so much white in his general appearance, that on board the packet he at once received the name of "the white man." He was generally well-informed, but particularly so in matters of commerce. Our intimacy increased rapidly, and I afterwards, indeed very soon, found the advantage of it. He was naturally of a communicative disposition, while he had much to communicate that was worth knowing. In me he found a willing hearer; for I was glad to receive any kind of useful information. With the prospect before us of a campaign in common, we soon knocked up a sort of friendship.