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turned upon his employer , and excused his not making any impression upon Russia by complaining of those very tools ot which he had Comp lained before he went out . From the correspondence , too , it is evident that Sir Chables " so changed about in his requirements that the Admiralty could not be expected to know exactly what he wanted ; but they did know from the first that he was an unwilling workman . If the public expected that after all his indiscretions he might yet do something great , the expectation had been justified by the allusions which Lord Paimeeston made afc the Beform Club dinner to the Admiral ' s past career ; and it is possible that Lord Palmebston himself was misled by the curious understanding even then subsisting between Sir James and Sir Charles . Napieb ' s constant cry was , that he could not be expected to unlock the Russian gates without the regular tools ; yet one of his boasted characteristics was , that he was the very man to do the work without the regular tools . " My gallant friend , " said Lord Palmeeston , " is a match for everything , " and " whatever he sets his mind to he generally succeeds in doing . " Having learned to plough the sea , he turns to on his Merchiston estate , and astonishes people by " growth of turnips , wire fences , and the like . " Now , a sailor who is such a splendid ploughman on shore as to grow wire fences , might surely be expected to unmake the Russian bricks without straw , or even mortar ; and , in fact , he undertook to do so , when he accepted the fleet as it was . But his Merchiston victories do not exhaust the list . We all remember his judicious exploits when he thundered a Saracen army into annihilation ,, heading a line of British mariners in his shirt-sleeves . Previously , in 1833 , he boarded a line-ofbattle ship , and when a Portuguese officer ran at him with a drawn sword , Sir Charles did not write to the Admiralty that he wanted a rapier for the combat , but he resorted to an invention of his own , and kicked the Portuguese Don down the hatchway . There is a still more striking example told with the others by Palmerston . At Valeiiza Sir Charles had to take a Portuguese fortressand here is exactly a case in point . " What are you doing ? " said Lord William : Russell , who met him on his way to the enterprise . "I am waiting , " said Sir Charles Napiee , "to take Valenza ; " and he did take it ; but with what force ? He marched up to the fortress , " dressed in a very easy way , followed by a fellow with two muskets on his shoulders . " " But , " said Lord William , " Valenza is a fortified town , and you must know that we soldiers understand how fortified towns are takpn . You' must open trenches ; you must make approaches ; you must establish a battery in breach ; and all this takes a good deal of time , and must be done according to rule . " "Oh ! " said my gallant frk-nd , "I have no time for all that , I have got some of my blue jackets up here , and a few of my ship ' s guns , and I mean to take the town witli a letter . " And so ho did . He sent the governor a letter to tell him that he had much better surrender at discretion . The governor was a very sensible man , and so surrender he did . So the trenches , and the approaches , the battery , broach , and all that , were saved , and the town of Valenza was handed over to the Queen of Portugal . No correspondence hero , no demands for trenching spades , no complaint that ho was unwell , no controversy with French generals , or anybody else , as to the practicability of taking the port ; on the contrary , when Lord William suggested difficulties , routine , trenches , and so forth , our gallant friend had "no time for oil that . " Give him a plough to plough with , and he will produce you a crop of iron fences ; a Wellington boot or a high-low , and he can dispose of a Portuguese Don ; a single marine with a couple
of muskets , and he will make a fort surrender at discretion . Really we do not wonder that Lord Palmebston , who had been drugged with these anecdotes , took Sir James ' s friend for a " Veni , vidi , vici" kind of Admiral , and gave his fiat to the appointment of Sir James ' s friend - Sir James ' s friend got the appointment , and was sent out to keep up the humbug of the Baltic campaign . Sir James at home found it necessary to satisfy the public , by calling for something from his admiral , and he began to goad ; but Sir Charles is not accustomed to the position of a goadee . He did not at all relish the application of the kick a tergo to make him move on , and urged beyond his patience , he retaliates by the most irregular of all his proceedings—he publishes the private correspondence . The Portuguese Don who was kicked could condole with Sir James , whose own kicks were , as it were , thrown in his face . As if to render the practical satire of this published correspondence complete , Sir James Graham mounts a little hillock by the first sod of the Silloth Railway , and proclaims to the world that , construing Peel to be " of all things the maintainer of peace , " the remainder of his own public life will bo to carry out the principles which he ascribes to Peel . The man , therefore , who puts Sir Charles Napier at the head of the Baltic fleet , knowing him to be a workman that complained of his tools , avows that he has throughout intended to act as the maintainer of peace . He left the present Ministry because it would not give up the war , and it is evident that when he appointed the aged Admiral he did not intend to give him a power wherewith to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm , but to use him as a bung for stopping the chinks through which the wiud might penetrate .
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BB 3 ^ MBBSt , 8 r 3 . 85 & ] THE LEAD ^ K 865
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JUSTICE IN THE COUNTIES . The " very hard case" of the two poor Essex labourers , sentenced to a fortnight ' s imprisonment in a county gaol for the felonious offence of taking a peep at a review of yeomanry , is only one among a thousand unreported instances of the burlesque of justice habitually perpetrated by county magistrates . It is not too much to say that these unremunerated authorities contrive to render the law , so far as it is affected by their jurisdiction , alternately odious and contemptible in three cases out of every four " brougjit before the bench . " The truth is , the very existence of our County Justices of the Peace in the latter half of the nineteenth century is an anomaly it will puzzle future historians of this epoch to explain . Efforts are being made every session to reduce our overgrown and shapeless mass of legislation to something liko reason and consistency , and to consolidate into an intelligible code that confusion of acts which only serves to prove the corruption of a State . The administration of our laws is , in its highest branches at leaBt , an honour to the country : our superior tribunals are presided over by men of unsullied integrity , of profound learning , of dignity and virtue in all the isolations of life . Still , in the midst of so many tardy but eflbctual reforms , the majestic figure of Justice is represented in the counties by poi'soimges whoso lonst defect is that they know absolutely nothing of the law . Justices of the Peace have survived Reform Bills and the Corn Laws , and they seem likely to survive other and more swooping changes ; thanks to the inattention of the public mind to their proceedings . Now , what are these Justices of the Peace , for whose wisdom there is a special prayer in the Litany of tho
Es-| tablished Church ? What are their qualifications ? There was a good old time when feudal notions obtained , and when those who held the soil were deemed the rightful lords of the liberties , if not of the lives , of their dependents . More recently , a not unreasonable theory has prevailed that the hereditary possessors of the soil were the true representatives of the supreme authority in matters of justice , and that to entrust them with the most solemn and responsible of functions "was to teach them that property had its duties as well as its rights . No doubt it was for the public good that game-preserving should not be the sole occupation , and famine prices the sole right of Squires . When labourers were treated as serfs , it was quite enough , of justice if the nearest magistrate could sign a warrant in a case in which he was as much a prosecutor as a judge . But since that good old time the beginning of the deluge has arrived ; new doctrines of equal justice prevail , and landlords , in a feudal sense , are a disappearing race . The actual ownera of a large portion of the land are men who have no hereditary nexus to the soil : men for the most part enriched by trade , or who by successful speculation have started up into sudden millionnaires . Many of these new men are highly respectable and sometimes valuable persons , and we cannot blame them for aspiring to become " country gentlemen . ' It is a praiseworthy and wholesome impulse that provokes them to invest their savings in the soil , and we cannot forget that it is to the increasing class of landowners who have sprung from trade that we owe many of the most energetic of our agricultural reformers . But it is one thing for a successful tradesman to occupy and improve the land , and another to exercise obsolete feudal privileges , without even those quasi hereditary qualifications which have been supposed to render ignorance respectable . When an individual who has made all his money , say by adulteration of the necessaries of life , buys up an ancient family , and reigna in its stead , we can sco no reason on earth why ho should be . selected by a Lord-Lieutenant to adulterate the sacred springs of justice . By all means let him enjoy any number of honorary titles , dresses , and distinctions . Let him be called n J . P-, lot him wear a deputylieutenaut ' s uniform , that singular costume so puzzling to foreigners , let him be a grandjuryman , and in clue course , high sheriff ; but in the name of common sense do not let him annisb his laborious leisure with aping the functions of a judge . There can be nothing more fatal to public order and to the national morality than an arbitrary and ignorant administration of the law ; and lot us remembor tliat-to tho understanding of a very large portion of the community the law conies home in the awful form of a county magistrate . We cannot honestly accuse ourselves of any levelling or anarchical design when we suggest tho " propriety of the law being administered by men not absolutely unacquainted with its rudiments . At present tho law appears to our rural populations almost na uncertain as the doctrine of tho Eatabliahment . On one bench poachers aro severely handled by a sporting " Justice , " on another they two almost patted on tho back by some retired greengroce r _ oi reformatory principles . In ono pnrt ; of tlio county you lind a pnraon of on nggrossivo and pedagogical turn , who dcap » tcho « •» Btarvi » ff pauper like a horotu ; , a »« " < * £ ; £ atops * 7 . « , rt of Bcntonoing a iu . »« s > < - ' * ££ ' s ? ^ WSS ' ££ s ^' giat t ^
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 865, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2105/page/13/
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