The official papers from which the foregoing account is taken are very bulky. They contain many positive declarations of irreconcilable facts, with accusations and insinuations, which, as Mr. Freeling said in deprecating their publication, would inevitably lead to one or more duels if they should become known. The present writer has desired to record only those facts which are not open to dispute, and he believes that the story as told above is demonstrably true.
The lawyer, whom an unkind destiny had placed temporarily in a position for which he was utterly unfit, made many charges against most of the persons concerned in this affair. His conduct was emphatically condemned by his own officers, and needs no further comment.
Of Captain Norway, Mr. Freeling, who was certainly better qualified than any other person to form an impartial opinion, wrote in the following terms to the Postmaster General on receiving news of the action: “Your Lordship’s Service, distinguished as it is, cannot boast a more gallant officer, a better seaman, or a more honourable man.” Two years later, when the commander of the “Lady Mary Pelham” thought fit to have his case brought up in Parliament, and a member speaking in his interest had used some words depreciating Captain Norway’s seamanship, Mr. Freeling observed: “The reputation of Captain Norway stands too high to be assailed by anything which the partizans of Mr. —— can say. In conduct and in character he was alike irreproachable.” About the same time a merchant who had been in the Canary Islands at the time when the Privateer put in there to refit after the action, and had availed himself of opportunities of hearing the story from the American officers, wrote to Mr. Freeling a letter which is still extant, and which remarkably confirms the account of the affair which has just been given.
The Privateer was the “Globe” of Baltimore, Captain Moon. The total loss was not ascertained, but it was known that out of thirty-nine men engaged in the two boarding assaults on the “Montagu” not one had escaped. The crew of the “Montagu” had, therefore, disposed of considerably more than man for man of their number.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE AMERICAN WAR.
It is now necessary to revert briefly to the state of the postal communications with northern Europe, which, when the subject was last mentioned in the ninth chapter of this work, were stated to depend on the chances of a system of smuggling organized from the newly acquired island of Heligoland. Within two years from that time (1807) the contraband trade had increased along the whole coast of the North Sea and the Baltic in an astonishing degree. Bourrienne, who was still at Hamburg, and who did not love the continental system, on which his master relied for striking his “mortal blow” at England, remarks with a half-sympathetic amusement how very little difference that system made in postal and commercial arrangements when once the smugglers had become expert. “The continental system,” he observes, “had made the smuggler’s trade a necessity, so that a great part of the population depended on it for subsistence.” Moreover, not goods alone, but news also circulated pretty freely from England in 1809, and correspondence addressed to merchants in the German towns was posted by agents despatched from Heligoland to Embden, Knipphausen, Varel, and other towns.
In truth, the great barricade proved little better than a trellis, penetrable anywhere by those who possessed the necessary courage and audacity. A good supply of those qualities was of course needed, for the trade was risky; and yet the disposition of the country people, which was strongly hostile to the French Customs officers, did much to rob it of its dangers. So determined were the people to obtain the English goods that they did not hesitate to take arms against the over-zealous Customs agents; and at Brinksham, in July, 1809, when the officers had seized no less than eighteen wagons loaded with English goods, the peasantry rose in force, recaptured the wagons, and escorted the goods to their destination.
To keep apart, on the one hand, a people so resolute to trade, and, on the other, a nation whose prosperity, if not its existence, depended on maintaining its commercial supremacy, something more was needed than a paper decree and a staff of Customs officers. “The trade with Oldenburgh,” writes Bourrienne, “was carried on as uninterruptedly as in time of peace. English letters and newspapers arrived on the continent, and those of the continent found their way into Great Britain, as if France and England had been united by ties of the firmest friendship.”
Such was the testimony of the man who of all others was best qualified to appreciate the enterprise and skill with which the operations of the Post-Office were conducted in these troublous days. It may, no doubt, be true that the credit of this success is to be divided between the Post-Office and private persons; for the merchants, in their constant communications with the smugglers, doubtless entrusted to them a considerable number of letters which had not passed through the British Post-Office. When all deductions are made, however, one cannot fairly refuse to Mr. Freeling and his colleagues the praise due to success in a perilous and difficult undertaking.
Circumstances which had already turned the peaceful officials of the Post-Office into arbiters of battles, had now made them smugglers, controllers of a series of operations as wild, as dangerous, and as picturesque as any which have been conducted within the limits of history. They took up their new parts with a happy adaptability, and played them with a degree of skill and resource which must always be remembered as constituting one of the greatest achievements in the past history of the Post-Office. When to this success is added the credit of having evolved out of the chaos of disorder and misrule which existed at Falmouth when he entered on office, a Service which could boast of such triumphs as those which have been described in this book, one is inclined to credit Mr. Freeling with capacities for administration which have not often been surpassed.