4. The officers are strictly charged to trace when going their rounds between decks, and to report instantly any man who shall presume either to smoke there, or to use any lights except in lanterns.
Every possible precaution is to be taken to prevent liquor being brought on board ship.
Regularity and decency of conduct are peculiarly required on board ship. It is the duty of those in command to repress, by the most decided and summary measures, any tendency to insubordination, to check every species of immorality and vice, and to discountenance to the utmost of their power whatever may disturb the comfort of others, or interrupt the harmony and good understanding which should subsist on board.
We had trouble in London. One day at a Committee, held at my house, an applicant, who was contracting to supply 900 rifles, attended to show certificates of their efficiency. The legal eye of the chairman (Mr. Craufurd, M.P., one of the prosecuting counsel of the Mint), detected them to be forgeries. On his saying so, the applicant snatched them from his hand. The chairman at once seized the knave, when a struggle ensued to obtain the false credentials. As it was not prudent in us to prosecute the presenter and have our proceedings before a court, we let him go.
There being no legal power to enforce order was the cardinal weakness of the British Legion. A competent commander should at least have been appointed, and an agreement of honour entered into by each volunteer, to obey his authority and that of those under him, on penalty of dismissal, and a certain forfeiture of money. These conditions, though not of legal force, would be binding on men of honour, and place the turbulent without honour at a disadvantage.
At the Queenwood community, in Robert Owen's day, no contract of this kind was thought of, and any one who declined to leave could defy the governor, until he was ejected by force—a process which did not harmonise with "Harmony Hall."
De Rohan met the Excursionists at Palermo on their disembarkation. "Captain Styles" was prudently absent, and no more was heard of him. The spurious commissions could not be recognised, and commotion naturally arose among those who had been defrauded. Captain Sarsfield, Colonel Peard, known as "Garibaldi's Englishman," De Rohan, Captain Scott, and others on the spot, with colourable pretensions to authority, took different views of the situation. Appeals were made to the Committee in London, on whose minutes stormy telegrams are recorded. Mr. Craufurd, though he had the prudent reticence of his race, would sometimes fall into impetuous expressions. Yet the second statement of his first thought would be faultless. This quality was so conspicuous that it interested me.
The first man of the Legion killed was young Mr. Bontems, only son of a well-known tradesman in the City of London—a fine, ingenuous fellow. He was shot by the recklessness of a medical student of the London University, as Bontems stood in a mess-room at Palermo. It was said not to be the first death caused by the criminal thoughtlessness of the same person. Mr. Southall, another London volunteer like young Bontems, was a man of genuine enthusiasm, character, and promise. He became an orderly officer to Garibaldi, by whom he was trusted and to whom he gave the black silk cravat he wore on entering Naples.*
* Southall forwarded it to me. A revolver and case was sent
me by request of a soldier who died on the field.
When Garibaldi retired to his island home, he sent to England the following testimony of the services and character of the Excursionists:—