MAJOR WYNDHAM AND THE CAT. 257 



this, they go on to address Major Wyndham in what he must conceive 

 to be, any thing but flattering terms. Although they deny that his con- 

 duct is a perversion of authority, they do not hesitate to designate 

 him as " inconsiderate, injudicious, precipitate" and as " deficient in 

 that discretion and judgment., which the circumstances of the case 

 required of him" This is pretty well for a set down ; and as Major 

 Wyndham is represented by his friends to be a man of quick and high 

 feeling, there is enough in the censure, to make him chew " the cud of 

 sweet and bitter fancy" for some time to come. We rejoice to think so; 

 for the expose will, though it should injure him, operate as a wholesome 

 warning to sundry other firey young officers, who may find themselves 

 placed in a similar predicament. 



Major Wyndham himself confesses he was ec very much excited;" 

 which, we suppose means, that he was in a great rage ; and that " when 

 he harangued the regiment, he stated he had found out the man who had 

 written the libel in the Dispatch, but making no allusion to the offence 

 for which Somerville was punished ! Need we go further than this to 

 prove that Somerville would not have been punished severely, for a 

 mere refusal to obey an order, assigning at the same time, at least, a 

 plausible reason for such refusal, if it had not been that he was the 

 author of a letter in a public print, with which Major Wyndham, the 

 court-martial, and the court of inquiry, had nothing on earth to do, in 

 considering his breach of duty. 



We will not waste words to prove that the morn brings light the 

 spirit in which Somerville has been prosecuted is equally clear. As re- 

 gards flogging, so long as the hateful law exists, the courts will be con- 

 strained nolens volens, to award the same meed of punishment two hun- 

 dred lashes for any, the slightest disobedience, or else they will declare, 

 trumpet-tongued to the world, that Somerville was punished for his 

 political opinions, and not for his military insubordination. 



And as regards Somerville, although he has been sacrificed at the 

 shrine of political and military enormity ; although he is dismissed from 

 the service of his country, and although he may carry to his grave the 

 marks of the degrading and accursed scourge, he also bears with him 

 the sympathy and the admiration of the most enlightened and humane 

 of his fellow-subjects. His discharge from the army is universally con- 

 sidered as the very reverse of disgraceful ; and the stripes that have 

 been inflicted on him, are estimated as honourable scars. 



Although, in himself, he has been made the victim of a detestable 

 law, we feel assured that the wrongs which he has endured will be far 

 more instrumental in effecting a repeal of the most monstrous of military 

 barbarisms, than all the orations of that ex-enemy of flogging, the Se- 

 cretary at War. This, then, must be his consolation that, although 

 unjustly a sufferer, he has been, unconsciously, the benefactor of his 

 fellow-creatures. 



