William Cobbett . Edward E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ To work we went, and during a long winter, while the rest were boozing and snoring, we gutted no small part of the regimental books, rolls, and other documents. Our way was this: to take a copy, sign it with our names, and clap the regimental seal to it, so that we might be able to swear to it when produced in court. All these papers were put into a little box, which I myself had made for the purpose. When we came to Portsmouth there was a talk of searching all the boxes, &c., which gave us great alarm, and induced us to take out all the papers, put them in a bag, and trust them to a custom-house officer, who conveyed them on shore to his own house, whence I removed them in a few days after.

      “Thus prepared, I went to London, and on the 14th of January, 1792, I wrote to the then Secretary at War, Sir George Yonge, stating my situation, my business with him, and my intentions; enclosing him a letter or petition from myself to the King, stating the substance of all the complaints I had to make; and which letter I requested Sir George Yonge to lay before the King. I waited from the 14th to the 24th of January without receiving any answer at all, and then all I heard was that he wished to see me at the War-office. At the War-office I was shown into an antechamber amongst numerous anxious-looking men, who, every time the door which led to the great man was opened, turned their eyes that way with a motion as regular and as uniform as if they had been drilled to it. These people eyed me from head to foot, and I never shall forget their look, when they saw that I was admitted into paradise, without being detained a single minute in purgatory. Sir George Yonge heard my story; and that was apparently all he wanted of me. I was to hear from him again in a day or two, and after waiting for fifteen days, without hearing from him or any one else upon the subject, I wrote to him again, reminding him that I had from the first told him that I had no other business in London; that my stock of money was necessarily scanty; and that to detain me in London was to ruin me. Indeed, I had in the whole world but about 200 guineas, which was a great deal for a person in my situation to have saved. Every week in London, especially as, by way of episode, I had now married, took at least a couple of guineas from my stock. I therefore began to be very impatient, and, indeed, also very suspicious that military justice, in England, was pretty nearly akin to military justice in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The letter I now wrote was dated on the 10th of February, to which I got an answer on the 15th, though the answer might have been written in a moment. I was, in this answer, informed that it was the intention to try the accused upon only part of the charges which I had preferred; and from a new-modelled list of charges sent me by the Judge-advocate, on the 23rd of February, it appeared that, even of those charges that were suffered to remain, the parts the most material were omitted. But this was not all. I had all along insisted that, unless the court-martial were held in London, I could not think of appearing in it; because, if held in a garrisoned place like Portsmouth, the thing must be a mere mockery. In spite of this, however, the Judge-advocate’s letter of the 23rd of February informed me that the court was to be held at Portsmouth or Hilsea. I remonstrated against this, and demanded that my remonstrance should be laid before the King, which, on the 29th, the Judge-advocate promised should be done by himself; but, on the 5th of March, the Judge-advocate informed me that he had laid my remonstrance before—whom, think you? Not the king, but the accused parties, who, of course, thought the court ought to assemble at Portsmouth or Hilsea, and doubtless for the very reasons that led me to object to its being held there.

      “Plainly seeing what was going forward, I, on the 7th of March, made, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, a representation of the whole case, giving him a history of the obstacles I had met with, which letter concluded thus: ‘I have now, sir, done all a man can do in such a case. I have proceeded regularly, and I may add, respectfully, from first to last; if I am allowed to serve my country by prosecuting men who have injured it, I shall do it; if I am thwarted and pressed down by those whose office it is to assist and support me, I cannot do it; in either case, I shall be satisfied with having done my duty, and shall leave the world to make a comparison between me and the men whom I have accused.’ This letter (which, by-the-bye, the public robbers have not published) had the effect of changing the place of the court-martial, which was now to be held in London; but, as to my other great ground of complaint, the leaving of the regimental books unsecured, it had no effect at all; and it will be recollected that, without those books, there could be, as to most of the weighty charges, no proof adduced without bringing forward Corporal Bestland, and the danger of doing that will be presently seen. But now, mark well as to these books: as to this great source of that kind of evidence which was not to be brow-beaten, or stifled by the dangers of the lash. Mark well these facts, and from them judge of what I had to expect in the way of justice. On the 22nd of January I wrote to Sir George Yonge, for the express purpose of having the books secured; that is to say, taken out of the hands and put out of the reach of the parties accused. On the 24th of January he told me that HE HAD taken care to give directions to have these documents secured. On the 18th of February, in answer to a letter, in which I (upon information received from the regiment) complained of the documents not having been secured, he wrote to me—and I have now the letter before me, signed with his own hand—that he would write to the colonel of the regiment about the books, &c.: ‘although,’ says he, ‘I cannot doubt but that the regimental books have been properly secured.’ This was on the 18th of February, mind; and now it appears, from the documents which the public-robbers have put forth, that the first time any order for securing the books was given was on the 15th of March, though the Secretary told me he had done it on the 24th of January, and repeated his assertion in writing on the 18th of February. There is quite enough in this fact alone, to show the public what sort of a chance I stood of obtaining justice.

Without these written documents nothing of importance could be proved, unless the non-commissioned officers and men of the regiment should happen to get the better of their dread of the lash; and, even then, they could only speak from memory. All, therefore, depended upon those written documents, as to the principal charges. Therefore, as the court-martial was to assemble on the 24th of March, I went down to Portsmouth on the 20th, in order to know for certain what was become of the books; and I found, as indeed I suspected was the case, that they had never been secured at all; that they had been left in the hands of the accused from the 14th of January to the very hour of trial; and that, in short, my request as to this point, the positive condition as to this most important matter, had been totally disregarded. There remained, then, nothing to rest upon with safety but our extracts, confirmed by the evidence of Bestland, the corporal, who had signed them along with me; and this I had solemnly engaged with him not to have recourse to, unless he was first out of the army; that is to say, out of the reach of the vindictive and bloody lash. He was a very little fellow, not more than about five feet high, and had been set down to be discharged when he went to England; but there was a suspicion of his connexion with me, and therefore they resolved to keep him. It would have been cruel, and even perfidious, to have brought him forward under such circumstances; and, as there was no chance of doing anything without him, I resolved not to appear at the court-martial, unless the discharge of Bestland was first granted. Accordingly, on the 20th of March, I wrote from Fratton, a village near Portsmouth, to the Judge-Advocate, stating over again all the obstacles that had been thrown in my way, complaining particularly that the books and documents had been left in the possession of the accused, contrary to my urgent request and to the positive assurances of the Secretary at War, and concluding by demanding the discharge of a man, whom I should name, as the only condition upon which I would attend the court-martial. I requested him to send me an answer by the next day, at night, at my former lodging; and told him,[5] that unless such answer was received, he and those to whom my repeated applications had been made, might do what they pleased with their court-martial; for that I confidently trusted that a few days would place me beyond the scope of their power. No answer came, and as I had learned in the meanwhile that there was a design to prosecute me for sedition, that was an additional motive to be quick in my movements. As I was going down to Portsmouth I met several of the sergeants coming up, together with the music-master; and as they had none of them been in America, I wondered what they could be going to London for; but, upon my return, I was told by a Captain Lane, who had been in the regiment, that they had been brought up to swear that at an entertainment СКАЧАТЬ