He has nae thought but how to kill Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings teafe him; His latest draught o' breathin leaves him Whence then arifes the difference of feeling in the former cafe? To what does the oppreffor owe his fafety? To the fpirit-quelling thought ;the laws of God and of my country have made his life facred! I dare not touch a hair of his head! -'Tis confcience that makes cowards of us all,but oh! it is confcience too which makes heroes of us all. ESSAY II. Le plus fort n'eft jamais affez fort pour être toujours le maître, s'il ne transforme fa force en droit et l'obeisance en devoir. ROUSSEAU. Viribus parantur provincia, jure retinentur. Igitur breve id gaudium, quippe Germani victi magis, quam domiti. FLORUS, iv. 12.* The ftrongest is never ftrong enough to be always the mafter, unless he transforms his power into right, and obedience into duty. Provinces are taken by force, but they are kept by right. This exultation therefore was of brief continuance, inafmuch as the Germans had been overcome, but not fubdued. TRULY great man,† the beft and greatest public character that I had ever the opportunity of making myfelf acquainted with, on affuming the command of a man of war, found a mutinous crew, more than one half of them uneducated Irishmen, and of the remainder no fmall portion had become failors by compromife of punishment. What terror could effect by feverity and frequency of acts of difcipline, had been already effected. * Slightly altered.-Ed. † Sir Alexander Ball.-Ed. And what was this effect? Something like that of a polar winter on a flask of brandy. The furious fpirit concentered itself with tenfold strength at the heart; open violence was changed into fecret plots and confpiracies; and the confequent orderliness of the crew, as far as they were orderly, was but the brooding of a tempeft. The new commander instantly commenced a system of discipline as near as poffible to that of ordinary law; - as much as poffible, he avoided, in his own person, the appearance of any will or arbitrary power to vary, or to remit, punishment. The rules to be observed were affixed to a confpicuous part of the ship, with the particular penalties for the breach of each particular rule; and care was taken that every individual of the ship should know and understand this code. With a fingle exception in the case of mutinous behaviour, a space of twenty-four hours was appointed between the first charge and the fecond hearing of the cause, at which time the accused person was permitted and required to bring forward whatever he thought conducive to his defence or palliation. If, as was commonly the cafe for the officers well knew that the commander would seriously resent in them all caprice of will, and by no means permit to others what he denied to himself, no answer could be returned to the three questions - Did you not commit the act? Did you not know that it was in contempt of fuch a rule, and in defiance of fuch a punifhment? And was it not wholly in your own power to have obeyed the one and avoided the other?the sentence was then paffed with the greatest folemnity, and another, but shorter, space of time was again interpofed between it and its actual execution. During this space the feelings of the commander, as a man, were fo well blended with his inflexibility, as the organ of the law; and how much he suffered previously to and during the execution of the sentence was fo well known to the crew, that it became a common saying with them when a failor was about to be punished, the captain takes it more to heart than the fellow himself. But whenever the commander perceived any trait of pride in the offender, or the germs of any noble feeling, he loft no opportunity of faying, “It is not the pain that you are about to fuffer which grieves me! You are none of you, I trust, such cowards as to turn faint-hearted at the thought of that! but that, being a man, and one who is to fight for his king and country, you should have made it neceffary to treat you as a vicious beast,—it is this that grieves me." I have been affured, both by a gentleman who was a lieutenant on board that ship at the time when the heroism of its captain, aided by his characteristic calmness and forefight, greatly influenced the decifion of the most glorious battle recorded in the annals of our naval history; and very recently by a grey-headed failor, who did not even know my name, or could have suspected that I was previously acquainted with the circumftances-I have been affured, I fay, that the success of this plan was such as astonished the oldest officers, and convinced the most incredulous. Ruffians, who, like the old Buccaneers, had been used to inflict torture on themfelves for fport, or in order to harden themselves beforehand, were tamed and overpowered, how or why they themselves knew not. From the fiercest fpirits were heard the most earnest entreaties for the forgiveness of their commander: not before the punishment, for it was too well known that then they would have been to no purpose, but days after it, when the bodily pain was remembered but as a dream. An invisible power it was, that quelled them, a power, which was therefore irrefiftible, because it took away the very will of refifting. It was the awful power of law, acting on natures pre-configured to its influences. A faculty was appealed to in the offender's own being; a faculty and a prefence, of which he had not been previously made aware,—but it answered to the appeal; its real existence therefore could not be doubted, or its reply rendered inaudible; and the very struggle of the wilder paffions to keep uppermoft counteracted their own purpose, by wasting in internal conteft that energy which before had acted in its entireness. on external refiftance or provocation. Strength may be met with strength; the power of inflicting pain may be baffled by the pride of endurance; the eye of rage may be answered by the ftare of defiance, or the downcaft look of dark and revengeful refolve; and with all this there is an outward and |