34 Life and Services of Captain Philip Beaver. QJuly, 



necessary, act under any junior officer, with all the good will, zeal, and energy 

 I am capable of." 



He served the cause in which he had embarked by his pen as well as 

 with his professional knowledge, and by hand-bills and publications of 

 various kinds, written in terras of plain and convincing good sense, did 

 much to dissipate the fears which some disaffected persons had industri- 

 ously spread. The sound opinion he expressed of Buonaparte, and 

 the correct notion he had formed of the manner in which that distin- 

 guished charlatan ought to have been treated, are convincing proofs of the 

 correctness of his judgment, and the firmness of his mind : — 



" ' No man of principle,' he exclaims, ' should ever submit his feelings and 

 conclusions to the theories of an enthusiast ; and the present mock-respectful 

 tone assumed by some of our leading men, as to the invincibility of our enemy, 

 his talent, and his perfection, should be most contemptuously spurned; for 

 whatever he may be. Old England can readily furnish men to match him. 

 Their declamation may gratify disaffection and ignorance ; but it will require 

 something more like reason to persuade the better classes.' 



" A letter which he published in the Courier of the 16th of February ISOi, 

 under the signature of Nearchus, tended so generally to allay the apprehen- 

 sions of the timid, that much curiosity was excited as to the author. It is a 

 fair specimen of argumentative reasoning : he considers the subject of a 

 descent on our coasts, under three heads,— the enemy's quitting their ports — 

 their crossing the channel — and their landing. Under the first, he proves, from 

 substantial data, the utter impracticability of more than a fourth of the 

 required number effecting it in one tide ; under the second, if they come in 

 detached portions, with British ships ' which know no winter,' we ' devour 

 them like shrimps ;' and in the event of their even overcoming both those 

 obstacles, and ' vomiting their unhallowed crews upon our blessed shores,' 

 they will he received there by the British army — an army with which I have 

 served in each quarter of the globe ; I know its merits, I know its foibles, I 

 know it well; and am as fully convinced as I am that I now write, that this 

 army as far surpasses all others in bravery, as British seamen surpass all 

 others in skill : to it I most willingly consign, without the least fear of the 

 consequence, all who may land.' " 



There is a passage in one of his letters, written soon after the period 

 here alluded to, which might be taken to apply literally to the cogging, 

 cozening tricks, which have lately been played in a place which it would 

 not be safe to mention more pai-ticularly : — 



" ' As to the change of ministry you mention, and dissolution of parliament, 

 it seems of little importance at present who is in, or who is out ; for the late 

 special pleading, speech-twisting debates, savour rather of the loaves and 

 fishes than of patriotism ; and, indeed, place and emolument, the apples of 

 the aristocratical struggle of whigs and tories, are more often the motive than 

 the reward of such contentions. Yet in times of public danger, party spirit 

 ought to give way to virtue. But notwithstanding a full knowledge of how 

 many states have been ruined by an indiscriminate love of popularity in their 

 public leaders, there are some of our most valuable characters foolishly sacri- 

 ficing at the same shrine, regardless of our national im])ortance. As to those 

 mob-courting demagogues, who clog their country's efforts, and thereby add 

 to its burthens, merely to exhibit themselves ; they deserve transportation.' " 



Captain Beaver was appointed soon after the commencement of the 

 late war, to the Acasta frigate, of 40 guns ; in which, having settled hJs 

 wife and family at Swansea, he sailed to the West Indies. If the 

 captain's free strictures on certain debates are well calculated to make 

 the persons concerned in them blush, his unbiassed opinions on the 



