Mr Stuart has promulgated a most alarming doctrine on the duties of a critic. "It was his duty, according to the received rules of criticism, to have read my book, and the preface to it, before he ventured to become the reviewer of any part of it." We again call that an alarming doctrine. Major Pringle having heard that a work in two thick volumes (nearly eleven hundred pages!) contained some slanders and calumnies on the British army, and especially on that part of it with which he had served, and on that part of their conduct in which he had taken an active share, boldly turns up the slanderous and calumnious passages, and squeezes out the poisonous matter with a muscular grasp that disdains a glove. Though an old campaigner, he is still in the prime of life; but having gone through many hardships and dangers in the tented field, we protest against the cruelty of ordering him on such a service as that sought to be imposed on him by Mr Stuart. The perusal of the preface he might get through; but the eleven hundred pages have even a more formidable look than the lines before New Orleans, whatever may have been the number of " toises" to which they extended-and we know several officers of indisputable valour, who have retreated from the attack on the work which Mr Stuart has thrown up, more than one who, by ladder and fascines, unluckily not left behind, having got across the ditch, and over the cotton bags and hogsheads of sugar, and bales of tobacco, surrendered within the lines, and were liberated on parole. Mr Stuart tells Major Pringle "that the reputation of the British army will not be increased either by overrating the merits of the army as superhuman, or underrating the merits of the enemy it met." This is sheer nonsense. Where has Major Pringle "overrated the merits of the British army?" Where has he used a single word of exaggeration? "Superhuman," indeed! Like mere mortal men, he has seen them lying dead or dying in thousands. But in one sense the British army is superhuman-numbers against numbers, and in fair fields, it has beaten every army with which it has fought. Nor has Major Pringle ever" underrated the merits of the enemy it met." The Americans are as brave as ourselves for their blood is ours-but for all that, we do not agree with Mr Stuart when he says, Major Pringle has devoted a considerable part and as I think the best part-of his second letter to a merited encomium on General Jackson." It is quite natural for Mr Stuart to say so; but excellent as that part of his letter is, the best parts-that is nearly the whole-of all his letters are those in which he bestows "merited encomiums" on our own soldiers and our own officers, and vindicates them against the aspersions of one who has dared to slander them on what he calls "authorities," but which are, in fact, foul and foolish falsehoods, which a man of honour like Mr Stuart, but for some unhappy twist in his understanding, would have scorned to credit. General Jackson behaved with humanity and generosity to all his prisoners, which did him as great honour as his conduct in the defence. We do not hesitate to call him a great man. Unappalled by the landing of a formidable army of British veterans, he infused fresh courage into the hearts of his countrymen, naturally brave; the danger was great, but the Americans under him had no fear, even of such a foe; strong as their position was-" a mile-long line full of men," it was found impregnable-not because of cottonbags only and parapets, but because of patriots deadly with steady hands, keen eyes, and stern hearts-invincible where they stood-unerring marksmen, whatever were their numbers-with a commander endowed with a genius for war-and in all respects equal to the glorious duty he had taken upon himself in his country's cause. Hitherto, we have purposely avoided all allusion to one part of Mr Stuart's "work," because we wished first to settle the controversy between him and Major Pringle; and because it contains the most atrocious charge ever brought against the character of a civilized state. Here it is-not "garbled,” but in all its loathsomeness. "It has been said, and never contradicted, so far as I could learn at New Orleans, that the British Commander in-chief had promised the plunder of the city to his army. This is a matter which even now concerns the honour of the British name, for the statement is founded on no light authority. "Mr Eaton, holding one of the highest offices in the general government of the United States, the present (1830) secretary of war to the American government at Washington, and the author of a life of General Jackson, expressly asserts, in that work, that 'Booty and Beauty,' was the watchword of Sir Edward Pakenham's army in the battle of the 8th. He thus writes: Let it be remembered of that gallant but misguided general, who has been so much deplored by the British nation, that to the cupidity of his soldiers he promised the wealth of the city as a recompense for their gallantry and desperation, while, with brutal licentiousness, they were to revel in lawless indulgence, and triumph uncontrolled over female innocence. Scenes like these our nation, dishonoured and insulted, had already witnessed at Hampton and Havre de Grace, (alluding to Sir G. Cockburn's expedition,) but it was reserved for her yet to learn, that an officer of high standing, polished, generous, and brave, should, to induce his soldiers to acts of daring valour, permit them, as a reward, to insult, injure, and debase those whom all mankind, even savages, reverence and respect. The history of Europe, since civilized warfare began, is challenged to afford an instance of such gross depravity, such wanton outrage on the morals and dignity of society. English writers may deny the correctness of the charge; it certainly interests them to do so, but its authenticity is too well established to admit a doubt, while its criminality is increased, from being the act of a people who hold themselves up to surrounding nations as examples of every thing that is correct and proper. "This charge does not rest upon Mr Eaton's authority alone. It is mentioned in all the American statements relative to this battle down to the present day. Mr Timothy Flint, who has given a detailed account of the campaign, repeats it in his geography and history of the Western States, and it also appears in the travels of Bernhard, Duke of Saxe Weimar, brother-in-law to the Duke of Clarence, (now King of Great Britain,) published so late as 1828." No gentleman-no man in Britain -unless besotted by some strange set of sentiments beyond the power of our imagination even to conceive --could have looked at these Ameri can lines without seeing that they were ONE LOATHSOME LIE. One would have thought that no person Britain-born would have suffered himself to be brought, even by the most pressing necessity, to make any use whatever of paper so ineffably foul; and what rally a generous and honourable are we to think of Mr Stuart, natuman, who publishes such filth in his "work," and manifestly believes that it may be flung deservedly in the face of the British People? "Now we, the undersigned, serving in that army, and actually present, and through whom all orders to the troops were promulgated, do, in justice to the memory of that distinguished officer, who commanded, and led the attack, the whole tenor of whose life was marked by manliness of purpose, and integrity of view, most unequivocally deny that any such promise was ever held out to the army, or that the watchword asserted to have been given out, was ever issued; and further, that such motives could never have actuated the man, who in the discharge of his duty to his King and country so eminently upheld the character of a true British soldier. "That a refutation of the above calumnies not having before appeared, is solely to be attributed to their not having come to the knowledge of the undersigned that they existed, until the work from which they are taken was given to the public in the present year, 1833. (Signed) JOHN LAMBERT, Lt.-General. And how does Mr Stuart behave on the appearance of this "document?" Is he covered with confu. sion of face-bowed to the ground by a sense of self-humiliation-driven to hide his head in silence and obscurity, till the storm of indignation, blowing upon him from all quarters, has subsided, and he and his base calumnies are alike forgotten? No. We hear him priding himself in the exposure of the GREAT BIG AMERICAN SERPENT LIE, which he had imported in a broad British bottom, and let loose to defile our soil with its fetid slime. "Where do you find that I have made any charge against the British army, Lambert and his brother officers?' Have which was lately refuted by Sir John the goodness, sir! to read that part of my narrative which relates to my recent correspondence with Sir John Lambert, and the other general officers who served with him on the expedition to New Orleans and you will at once perceive, that it contains no charge against the British army, and that my authority is not at all pledged for the accuracy of the fact stated relating to Sir Edward Pakenham, the Commander-in-chief, alone. I have only mentioned, that I was told at New Orleans that the British Commander-inchief had promised the plunder of the city to his army.' I added, that this was a matter which even yet concerned the honour of the British name'—I did not say of the British army, because the charge related to the single individual who was implicated. If I had known that the statement made to me was true, or if I had given implicit credit to it, I should not have conceived myself called upon to specify the authorities which led me to publish this, any more than the other details respecting the battle. The authorities which I produced are undoubtedly of the most respectable description; two of them American, and one of them European; the European authority being that of the distinguished officer Bernhard, Duke of Saxe Weimar, brother-in-law of the King of Great Britain, who now, I believe, commands the Dutch army, under the Prince of Orange. It certainly did appear to me at the time, as it still does, that those authorities, not exclusively American, coupled with the information given to me on the spot, rendered it imperative on me to mention that this statement was made to me at New Orleans, and that I had not heard it contradicted; but I might, had I thought it necessary in order to screen myself from the accusation of trusting to American authority, have confirmed it by even further evidence, which proves its general belief in Europe at the period when I was at New Orleans. Count Marbois, President of the Council of Ancients before the French Revolution, and who was afterwards one of the Ministers of Louis XVIII., has, in his admirable History of Louisiana, published in 1828, I believe,) expressly declared (at page 380,) that the pil lage of New Orleans was announced to the army as a magnificent recompense for its dangers and toils. In fact, the crops of cotton and other rich productions of these vast countries, were stowed at this city, it being the limit and entrepôt of the navigation of the Mississippi and Missouri.' "The expressions used by Marbois, and the other writers to whom I former ly appealed, are unqualified. It appears from them, as well as from the notices which have appeared in the American newspapers of my correspondence with Sir John Lambert, that the report of the plunder of New Orleans having been promised by the Commander-in-chief to the army, was implicitly believed, as well in Europe as in America, until it was authoritatively contradicted by Sir John Lambert, in consequence of the notice which appeared in my book. My publication, therefore, has been most useful in eliciting the complete refutation of the calumny, which otherwise might have remained unknown in this country, until the death of the other general officers who were with the army had rendered a complete contradiction impossible. Mr Eaton, who was lately one of the Secretaries of State at Washington, seems first of all to have published it to the world; but he is quite incapable of inventing such a story, which may at the time have been believed on the authority of some deserter or worthless person attached to the army. "Upon the whole, I have not seen occasion to retract or cancel a single word that I have written," &c. He publishes a self-evident lie of the most loathsome kind, and all the authorities," who have told it, and then says, "my authority is not at all pledged for the accuracy of the fact!" What does he mean? How could his authority be pledged for the accuracy of a fact of which it was impossible he personally could know any thing at all? He was probably in the Parliament House, walking about arm in arm with another of "the most fair and liberal Whigs of the age," the day Pakenham was said to have issued that nefarious watchword-snoring in his bed the morning Pakenham and two thousand other gallant spirits fell-many of them to rise no more. His authority pledged, forsooth! All he could do he did to dishonour that gallant man and his gallant troops-he collected all the evidence that existed, and gave it to the world without one word to indicate that he had the slightest suspicion of the charge being the Lie of all Lies. "If I had known that the statement made to me was true, or if I had GIVEN IMPLICIT CREDIT to it, I should not have conceived myself called upon to specify the authorities which led me to publish this, any more than the other details respecting the battle." Infatuated he was to publish it at all; but even he would not have dared to publish, without any tittle of proof, such an incredible charge against such a man. Had he done so, he would have been set down as a madman. We do not know what he means by implicit credit; it is plain he does not understand the word implicit; but that he did credit it is certain; or, if he did not, never before did any man publish to the world so foul a charge against the character of his country, without deigning to let that country know that he disbelieved the slander on the national honour and humanity, at the very moment he was writing it, and during all the months that three editions of his "work" were giving it circulation at home and abroad. And did it never occur to him, "one of the fairest and most liberal writers of the age," to write to any one of the Five British Officers who served under Pakenham, communicating to him, or to them all, the hideous calumny to which he "did not give implicit credit," that they might stifle or strangle the ugly and decrepit monster, or if guilty, that the Truth might go forth, and the whole British People be thenceforth justly numbered among Barbarians? No man of honour like Mr Stuart, could, till his mind was ruined by some unimaginable Anti-British mental habit grown into an anomalous disease, have circulated such a Lie, without first ascertaining whether or not it was a Lie, from those Five Officers-or from some one of the hundred officers or thousand men still surviving, we hope, who served under Pakenham. Nor can the utmost lenity of judgment allow the omission to be but the grossest imprudence-it were either shocking injustice-reckless folly or stupid infatuation. Whatever it was it still is-for hear him now. "My publication has been most useful in eliciting the complete refutation of the calumny, which otherwise might have remained unknown in this country, until the death of the other general officers who were with the army had rendered a complete contradiction impossible." Dr Browne, the ingenious and learned editor of the Caledonian Mercury, in an admirable article, well asks, "Would there have been any great harm if 'the calumny' had remained un known in this country, especially considering the tainted source whence it is supposed to have originated? Or if the publication thereof on insufficient evidence had not been justified on the plea of its alleged utility' in eliciting a complete refutation; a plea, be it observed, which is equally available for a description of cases which Mr Stuart could not have had in his contemplation, when he perused the words we have just quoted, and which, in fact, might with like force be urged in defence or extenuation of the most wanton and atrocious slanders ?" Unless we saw it there with our own eyes now lying before us, we could not credit the attempt he makes to deny that the charge affects either the British people or the British army! It only affects the character of Sir Edward Pakenham! Dr Browne puts the absurdity of such a notion in so strong a light, that it must now surely strike even Mr Stuart. "But is it meant to be seriously maintained that Sir Edward Pakenham's army' formed no part of the British army?'-or that the former could have been disgraced without affecting the credit of the latter?-or that if such a watchword' had actually been given out it would not have implied a conviction, on the part of the Commanderin-chief, that the ruffians under his command were inaccessible to any other motive or stimulus than that supplied by the prospect of rioting in all the excesses of unrestrained rapine and licentiousness ?-or that this would not have involved the severest censure, nay the bitterest reproach on Sir Edward Pakenham's army' as well as its Generalin-chief?-or that, on such a supposition, the latter would have been the single individual who was implicated?' The issuing of such a watchword' would, under any circumstances, have been highly culpable in a General-in-chief, because grossly at variance with all the usages of civilized warfare; but if it had actually been given out, it must either have been held as a gross insult and outrage to every officer and man in the army, or it must have been construed as probatio probata that Sir Edward Pakenham's army' were, in point of discipline, no better than a horde of wild savages or red Indians, capable only of being moved by an appeal to the lowest and most brutal animal appetites. And in either case would it not have inferred a reproach to the British army?-in the one, that a Commander-in-chief should have been found capable at once of violating the laws of civilized warfare, insulting the character of his troops, and endeavouring to destroy the very discipline which it was his most sacred duty to maintain and enforce by every means in his power?-in the other, that the army of a highly enlightened and civilized nation should have consisted of such abandoned and detestable miscreants as to be moved to do their duty only by an unlimited warrant, in the event of success, to commit every crime which is calculated to degrade and to brutalize human nature?" All the rest of his unfortunate floundering is equally pitiableand at last he attributes the origin of this "universal belief" in America to "some deserter or worthless person attached to the army!!" Mr Secretary Eaton-who must be a poor creature-had the information from a "deserter or other worthless person;" Timothy Flint - who must be an equally poor creaturehad it from Eaton; Count Marbois, author of an "admirable History of Louisiana," and "one of the fairest and most liberal writers of the age"who must be a poor creature toohad it from Flint; and so it passed from one poor creature to another -into what Mr Stuart calls "universal belief;" and he-in this affair the poorest creature of all-without" pledging his own authority to the accuracy of the fact"-without "giving it implicit credit" and without taking the trouble to ask any questions of the many honourable British officers who I could have settled the matter at once-circulates three editions of the calumny here-and on five honourable and distinguished men declaring it to be all a lie, draws himself proudly up, and exclaims, What a useful man am I!! And yet this very person reads a lecture to the Editor of The Edinburgh Evening Courant, on his rashness on presuming to give any opinion on Major Pringle's letters, without waiting to hear what he, Mr Stuart, might have to say in reply! Why, Mr Buchanan must have waited nearly three months before venturing to say a word. What laughable arrogance! Mr Buchanan is a man of remarkable talents and information-and an honour to the Press-and will not suffer himself to be thus dictated to, and rated, like an inferior, by a man so far beneath him in intellect and certainly not above him in rank and station. He has borne the reproof with singular good temper but, to be sure, anger is not contempt. He had written not a word against Mr Stuart, to whom it is well known he is in all respects friendly; he had merely expressed, with mildness, his belief that Major Pringle had rectified some errors in the "Three Years in North America." Yet his High Mightiness, the "Great American Traveller," in the final sentence of his " Refutation," or rather "Exposure," thus addresses this highly-respected gentleman. “I have now, sir, shewn, by referring to a mass of evidence, especially to official documents, more to be depended upon than the testimony of a single individual, whatever his rank in the army may have been, how entirely erroneous are Major Pringle's statements, in every essential particular; and that the grievous accusation against me, of having preferred unfounded charges against my countrymen, and upon American authority, is itself the most baseless of unfounded calumnies. With respect to yourself, (whom I freely acquit of all intention to injure me, though I cannot exempt you from the blame of rashness,) I hope the lesson which this exposure has given you, will lead you in future to adhere to that system of cautious management for which your Journal has hitherto been remarkable.-I am, sir, "Your obedient servant, Major Pringle deserves well of the British army; and has shewn, like many other military and naval men, that he can use the pen as well as the sword. It is seldom that we meddle, in this way, with military or naval affairs; for we leave them to that excellent monthly Magazine, the United Service Journal, and to that excellent weekly paper, the United Service Gazette, edited by Mr Watts. |