Mutiny in the Fleet. 67 



it die of hunger. My heart is deeply pained as 

 I write this, seventy years afterwards. 



***** 

 In Fifeshire, as elsewhere, political opinions 

 separated friends and disturbed the peace of 

 families ; discussions on political questions were 

 violent and dangerous on account of the hard- 

 drinking then so prevalent. At this time the 

 oppression and cruelty committed in Great Britain 

 were almost beyond endurance. Men and women 

 were executed for what at the present day would 

 only have been held to deserve a few weeks' 

 or months' imprisonment.' 55 ' Every liberal opinion 

 was crushed, men were entrapped into the army 

 by promises which were never kept, and press- 

 gangs tore merchant seamen from their families, 

 and forced them to serve in the navy, where 

 they were miserably provided for. The severity 

 of discipline in both services amounted to tor- 

 ture. Such was the treatment of the brave men 

 on whom the safety of the nation depended ! They 

 could bear it no longer ; a mutiny broke out in the 

 fleet which had been cruising off the Texel to watch 

 the movements of a powerful Dutch squadron. The 



The late Justice Coltman told us, when he and Lady Coltman 

 came to see my father and mother at Siena, that he recollected when he 

 first went the circuit seeing more than twenty people hanged at once at 

 York, chiefly for horse-stealing and such offences. EDITOR. 



r 2 



