Is it possible that the Reviewer should still remain the dupe of such a vulgar error? That at one time it was the custom to send to sea the fool of the family, is certain, and had the Reviewer flourished in those days, he would probably have been the one devoted to the service—but tempora mutantur. Is the Reviewer aware that one-half, and certainly the most successful half, of English diplomacy, is now carried on by the admirals and captains, not only in the Mediterranean, but all over the world. Is he aware that when the Foreign Office wishes to do its work cheaply and well, it demands a vessel from the Admiralty, which is made over to that office, and is set down as employed on “particular service:” that during that service the captain acts from instructions given by the Foreign Office alone, and has his cabin piled with voluminous documents; and that, like the unpaid magistracy of England, we sailors do all the best of the work, and have nothing but our trouble for our pains. Nay, even the humble individual who pens this remonstrance was for months on this very service, and, when it was completed, the Foreign Office expressed to the Admiralty its satisfaction at his conduct during his short diplomatic career.
House dogs! Hear this, ye public of England! A sensible house dog is to be preferred to St. Vincent, Nelson, Collingwood, Exmouth, and all those great men who have aided their country as much with their pen as with their sword; as much by their acuteness and firmness in diplomacy, as by their courage and conduct in action.
Now, Mr Reviewer, don’t you feel a little ashamed of yourself? Would you really like to give up your name as the author of this bare-faced libel? Would you like openly to assert that such is your opinion, and that you will stand by it?
No liberal, high-minded man, whatever his politics may have been, has ever refused to do justice to a service which has been the bulwark of England. Lord Brougham has lately published a work containing the lives of celebrated persons in the reign of George the Third. I will just quote a few passages from his life of Lord St. Vincent.
“The present sketches would be imperfect if Lord St. Vincent were passed over in silence, for he was almost as distinguished among the statesmen, as the warriors of the age.
“A statesman of profound views and of penetration, hardly equalled by any other man of his time.
“But the consummate vigour and wisdom of his proceedings during the dreadful period of the mutiny, are no less a theme of wonder and of praise.
“When the Addington ministry was formed, he was placed at the head of the Admiralty; and now shone forth in all its lustre that great capacity for affairs with which he was endowed by nature, and which ample experience of men, habits of command, and an extended life of deep reflection, had matured.
“The capacity of a statesman and the valour of the hero, outshone by the magnanimous heart which beats only to the measures of generosity and justice.”
Here, again, the Reviewer is in what the Yankees would call an “everlasting awkward fix;” for he contradicts Lord Brougham, the patron and sole supporter of his fast-waning review, without the aid of whose admirable pen, it would long ago have gone to its proper place. He must now either admit that he is himself wrong, or that it is Lord Brougham who is in error. He has but to choose.