762 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809. 



under a window of the council- 

 chamber. Springing instinctively 

 from his seat to the window, he 

 beheld a miserable wretch fastbound 

 to a postjfixed upright in the groun d, 

 with one leg strained violently 

 back towards the thigh, by means 

 of a strong iron hoop, inclosing 

 both the leg and the thigh, at some 

 distance above and below the 

 knee. Within this hoop, along 

 the front of the leg, was an iron 

 wedge driven in by an executioner, 

 armed with a sledge-hammer. Near 

 the sufferer sat, at a small table, 

 a person habited like a judge or 

 magistrate, and a secretary, or 

 clerk, with paper before him, to 

 mark down the declarations to be 

 extorted from the criminal in ago- 

 ny. Filled with horror at this 

 sight, and regardless alike of the 

 assembly around him, and of the 

 consequences of his act with re- 

 spect to himself, the general throw- 

 ing open the window, ordered a 

 Serjeant in attendance to rush for- 

 ward, to prevent a repetition of 

 the stroke on the iron wedge, and 

 to release the wretch from his tor- 

 ture. While this was going for- 

 ward, the members of the council, 

 no strangers to his dispositions, 

 had surrounded the governor at 

 the window, and the attorney-ge- 

 neral of the colony respectfully, 

 but earnestly remonstrated against 

 this interruption of the course of 

 justice, styling it an infraction of 

 the capitulation, which, in every 

 other point and tittle, he acknow- 

 ledged had been most religiously 

 fulfilled by the governor, whose 

 conduct in his office had, he added, 

 given universal satisfaction. 



To these representations, gene- 

 ral M. answered, that he had al- 

 ways been, and always would be, 



most solicitous to merit the good 

 opinion of the colony, by a con- 

 scientious discharge of his duties 

 but that neither by his natural 

 feelings, nor by his education as a 

 Briton, could he be reconciled to 

 the practice of torture. He coi>- 

 cluded by solemnly declaring that, 

 whether torture were or were not 

 authorized by the French laws, a 

 point he did not presume to deter- 

 mine, such a practice, where he 

 commanded, he never would en- 

 dure, and that they would find his 

 conduct on that occasion, if an in- 

 fraction of the capitulation, the 

 only infraction on which they 

 would ever have it in their power 

 to complain. 



All the members of the council 

 dined that day with the governor ; 

 and although the object of his cle- 

 mency was reported to have been 

 singularly undeserving, were se- 

 cretly well pleased with the oc- 

 currence, and the only effect pro- 

 duced by it on the minds of the in- 

 habitants at large, of Guadaloupe 

 and the other French islands, was 

 to increase the popularity of their 

 British commander, who, while he 

 remained in the West Indies, never 

 heard that recourse was had to 

 torture, in judicial proceedings, 

 either in Guadaloupe, after its re- 

 storation to France, or in any other 

 French colony. 



Having finally closed his rela- 

 tions with the West Indies, as a 

 governor and commander-in-chief 

 of the forces, with entire satisfac- 

 tion to all concerned at home and 

 abroad, as well as to his own mind 

 (for in the seven years during 

 which he discharged all the duties 

 of chancellor in his government, 

 not one appeal from his decisions 

 was brought, home to the king 



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