“I am going to surprise you—I know it is the most imprudent thing a story-teller can do to give notice or promise of a surprise; but you see, I have such confidence at this moment in my fact, that I hazard this imprudence—Whom do you think I have seen? Guess—guess all round the breakfast-table—father, mother, Caroline, Rosamond—I defy you all—ay, Rosamond, even you, with all your capacity for romance; the romance of real life is beyond all other romances—its coincidences beyond the combinations of the most inventive fancy—even of yours, Rosamond—Granted—go on—Patience, ladies, if you please, and don’t turn over the page, or glance to the end of my letter to satisfy your curiosity, but read fairly on, says my father.
“You remember, I hope, the Irishman, O’Brien, to whom Erasmus was so good, and whom Mr. Gresham, kind as he always is, took for his porter: when Mr. Gresham set off last week for Amsterdam, he gave this fellow leave to go home to his wife, who lives at Greenwich. This morning, the wife came to see my honour to speak to me, and when she did see me she could not speak, she was crying so bitterly; she was in the greatest distress about her husband: he had, she said, in going to see her, been seized by a press-gang, and put on board a tender now on the Thames. Moved by the poor Irishwoman’s agony of grief, and helpless state, I went to Greenwich, where the tender was lying, to speak to the captain, to try to obtain O’Brien’s release. But upon my arrival there, I found that the woman had been mistaken in every point of her story. In short, her husband was not on board the tender, had never been pressed, and had only stayed away from home the preceding night, in consequence of having met with the captain’s servant, one of his countrymen, from the county of Leitrim dear, who had taken him home to treat him, and had kept him all night to sing ‘St. Patrick’s day in the morning,’ and to drink a good journey, and a quick passage, across the salt water to his master, which he could not refuse. Whilst I was looking at my watch, and regretting my lost morning, a gentleman, whose servant had really been pressed, came up to speak to the captain, who was standing beside me. The gentleman had something striking and noble in his whole appearance; but his address and accent, which were those of a foreigner, did not suit the fancy of my English captain, who, putting on the surly air, with which he thought it for his honour and for the honour of his country to receive a Frenchman, as he took this gentleman to be, replied in the least satisfactory manner possible, and in the short language of some seamen, ‘Your footman’s an Englishman, sir; has been pressed for an able-bodied seaman, which I trust he’ll prove; he’s aboard the tender, and there he will remain.’ The foreigner, who, notwithstanding the politeness of his address, seemed to have a high spirit, and to be fully sensible of what was due from others to him as well as from him to them, replied with temper and firmness. The captain, without giving any reasons, or attending to what was said, reiterated, ‘I am under orders, sir; I am acting according to my orders—I can do neither more nor less. The law is as I tell you, sir.’
“The foreigner bowed submission to the law, but expressed his surprise that such should be law in a land of liberty. With admiration he had heard, that, by the English law and British constitution, the property and personal liberty of the lowest, the meanest subject, could not be injured or oppressed by the highest nobleman in the realm, by the most powerful minister, even by the king himself. He had always been assured that the king could not put his hand into the purse of the subject, or take from him to the value of a single penny; that the sovereign could not deprive the meanest of the people unheard, untried, uncondemned, of a single hour of his liberty, or touch a hair of his head; he had always, on the continent, heard it the boast of Englishmen, that when even a slave touched English ground he became free: ‘Yet now, to my astonishment,’ pursued the foreigner, ‘what do I see?—a freeborn British subject returning to his native land, after an absence of some years, unoffending against any law, innocent, unsuspected of all crime, a faithful domestic, an excellent man, prevented from returning to his family and his home, put on board a king’s ship, unused to hard labour, condemned to work like a galley slave, doomed to banishment, perhaps to death!—Good Heavens! In all this where is your English liberty? Where is English justice, and the spirit of your English law?’
“‘And who the devil are you, sir?’ cried the captain, ‘who seem to know so much and so little of English law?’
“‘My name, if that be of any consequence, is Count Albert Altenberg.’
“‘Well, Caroline, you are surprised.—‘No,’ says Rosamond; ‘I guessed it was he, from the first moment I heard he was a foreigner, and had a noble air.‘’
“‘Altenberg,’ repeated the captain; ‘that’s not a French name:—Why, you are not a Frenchman!’
“‘No, sir—a German.’
“‘Ah ha!’ cried the captain, suddenly changing his tone, ‘I thought you were not a Frenchman, or you could not talk so well of English law, and feel so much for English liberty; and now, since that’s the case, I’ll own to you frankly, that in the main I’m much of your mind—and for my own particular share, I’d as lieve the Admiralty had sent me to hell as have ordered me to press on the Thames. But my business is to obey orders—which I will do, by the blessing of God—so good morning to you. As to law, and justice, and all that, talk to him,’ said the captain, pointing with his thumb over his left shoulder to me as he walked off hastily.
“‘Poor fellow!’ said I; ‘this is the hardest part of a British captain’s duty, and so he feels it.’