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this caution, and the lengthened march through woods and over hills by an unfrequented route, there was no appearance of him at the hour appointed. The perplexity of the officer when he reached the neighbourhood of Edinburgh may be easily imagined. He moved forward slowly indeed, but no soldier appeared; and unable to delay any longer, he marched up to the Castle, and as he was delivering over the prisoners, but before any report was given in, Macmartin, the absent soldier, rushed in among his fellow prisoners, all pale with anxiety and fatigue, and breathless with apprehension of the consequences in which his delay might have involved his benefactor.

In whatever light the conduct of the officer (my respect→ able friend Major Colin Campbell) may be considered, either by military men or others, in this memorable exemplification of the characteristic principle of his countrymen, fidelity to their word, it cannot but be wished that the soldier's magnanimous self-devotion had been taken as an atonement for his own misconduct and that of the whole, who also had made a high sacrifice, in the voluntary offer of their lives for the conduct of their brother soldiers. Are these a people to be treated as malefactors, without regard to their feelings and principles ? and might not a discipline, somewhat different from the usual mode, be, with advantage, applied to them?

GRANT.

THE year 1795 exhibited another instance of insubordi nation, originating in horror of the disgrace which, according to Highlanders' views, could not fail to attach to themselves and their country from an infamous punishment for crimes not in themselves infamous, in the moral sense of the word: for it is necessary to make a distinction between this and the feeling excited among these men when punishments are awarded for disgraceful crimes. In cases where soldiers were guilty, or were suspected of bringing shame on themselves by actions unbecoming good men, I have always ob

served that the soldiers were anxious they should be brought to the punishment their crimes deserved.

• The mutiny of the Grant was, in every respect, similar in its cause, object, and consequences, to that of the Breadalbane Fencibles. Several men were put into confinement, and threatened with punishment. The idea was insupportable to many of the soldiers, who, in defiance of their officers, broke out and released the prisoners. Sir James Grant, the colonel and patron of the regiment, hurried to Dumfries, where the regiment was then quartered. But he was too late; and the violation of order and of military discipline was too glaring to be passed over. The regiment was removed to Musselburgh, where Corporal Macdonald, Charles and Alexander Mackintosh, Alexander Fraser, and Duncan Macdougall, were tried and condemned to be shot. The corporal was pardoned, and the three soldiers were ordered to draw lots, (Alexander Fraser was not permitted to draw,) when the fatal chance fell on Charles Mackintosh, who, with Fraser, was shot on Gullane Links, on the 16th July 1795; and thus affording another striking instance of the necessity of paying a due regard to the feelings of soldiers, and of treating them as men of good principles, whose culpability may proceed more from mistaken notions than from depravity. It also affords a striking instance of the paramount call, on those under whose direction they are placed in their native country, that their treatment be not such as to loosen and destroy those finer feelings, and render the people desperate, regard less of their own character, disaffected to the government, and transplant a spirit of hatred and revenge, in place of the fidelity, confidence, and attachment of other times.

CANADIAN.

In the year 1804, orders were issued to raise a regiment in the Highlands, to be called the Canadian Fencibles, and to serve in Canada only. Owing to several circumstances the corps was speedily filled up. One extensive glen in In

verness-shire was in that year improved in the modern merciless style, and depopulated. Several other detached parts of the country had been similarly treated. To the young and active, who had thus lost their homes and their usual mode of subsistence, this corps appeared to present the means of reaching a country whither many of their friends and immediate neighbours had gone before them, and where they were taught to expect a permanent settlement without being subject to the "summary ejectment still practised in some parts of the north, when tenants prove refractory," namely, burning their houses about their ears,—a mode of ejecting a virtuous peasantry, for which the civilized revivers of this obsolete, but efficient practice, have not received the notice they deserve.

The men of this corps were ordered to assemble in Glasgow, where it was discovered that the most scandalous deceptions had been practised upon them, and that terms had been promised which Government would not, and could not sanction. The persons who had deceived these poor men by representing the terms in a more favourable light than truth would justify, obtained a great number of recruits without any, or for a very small bounty.

When these men discovered their real situation, they were loud in their remonstrances, and, becoming very disorderly and disobedient, were ready to break out into open mutiny. But an immediate inquiry being made into the foundation of their complaints by General Wemyss of Wemyss, who then commanded in Glasgow, they were found to be of such a nature, that it was necessary to satisfy them; in the mean time the regiment, consisting of 800 men, was marched to Ayr. The ordering them so far south from Greenock, the port of embarkation for Canada, gave a kind of confirmation to the previous report, that they were to be sent to the Isle of Wight, and thence to the East or West Indies. However, after a full inquiry, the whole were discharged; the promises made could not be confirmed, as they were founded on the grossest deception, and inconsistent with the objects of GoD d

VOL. II.

vernment and the terms proposed. But it was an additional cause of discontent that they had been sent so much farther from home, and that those who still intended to go to Canada were so much farther removed from the usual place of embarkation. As the second battalions of the 78th and 79th regiments were, at that time, recruiting, numbers of the men enlisted with Colonel Cameron, and a few (twenty-two) with me, for the 78th. Several who had money to pay for the passage emigrated to America. Those who had not the means spread themselves all over the country, proclaiming their wrongs, and thus helping to destroy the confidence of their countrymen, not only in Government, but in all public men, whom they now began to think utterly unworthy of credit.

The happy auspices under which the British army is now placed, the justice done to the soldier, and the regard paid to his comforts, and even to his feelings as a man, are the best and most certain security against future acts of insubordination. It is, therefore, the less necessary to point out the baneful effects of using any deception towards soldiers, as the thing is now unknown; but, should any individuals be base enough to make such an attempt, the certain infamy that would follow a discovery forms an effectual preventive. It may however be useful, indeed my great object in adverting to the unfortunate misunderstandings which occurred so close upon each other in the American War is, to convince the soldier of the present day how different, and how much more honourable his treatment now is, contrasted with the deceptions practised on credulous and unsuspicious men, which, by rendering them jealous and distrustful, were so pernicious in their effects to the service in general, and tended, as I have frequently noticed, to give an unfavourable impression of their character, where these circumstances were unknown.

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ALTHOUGH SO much has been already said about national corps, distinguished by their garb, or otherwise, I may still add a few observations on the effect the Highland regiments have had in directing the notice of the public to the military character of Scotland, which is now so much blended with the sister kingdom, that, while we hear of the English Par liament, and the English navy and army, Scotland is never! once mentioned. In the great naval victories of Britain, we have never heard of Scotch sailors; and were it not for those corps distinguished by national marks, the northern part of the kingdom would have been as low in military as in naval fame, and as unnoticed at Alexandria and Waterloo as at Aboukir and Trafalgar. In Keith's and Campbell's corps in Germany in the Seven Years' War, 1,200 Highlanders gave celebrity to the warlike character of Scotland; at the> same time that, calculating from the usual proportions, there were at least 3,000 Scotch soldiers intermixed with the English regiments under Prince Ferdinand; but, although each of these men had been as brave as Julius Cæsar, we should never have heard a syllable of Scotland. Fortunately, however, there was no mistaking "the brave band of Highlanders," with their plaids and broadswords. The

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