,' they say; 'why should he be above us?' For they have no
conception that anybody has a right to ascendancy over themselves except
by birth or money. This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a
certain extent, the bane of the two services, naval and military. The
writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this feeling at
work in the army when a child, and he has good reason for believing that
it was as strongly at work in the navy at the same time, and is still as
prevalent in both. Why are not brave men raised from the ranks? is
frequently the cry; why are not brave sailors promoted? The Lord help
brave soldiers and sailors who are promoted! They have less to undergo
from the high airs of their brother-officers, and those are hard enough
to endure, than from the insolence of the men. Soldiers and sailors
promoted to command are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out
of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to
extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence and
mutinous spirit of the men: 'He is no better than ourselves; shoot him,
bayonet him, or fling him overboard!' they say of some obnoxious
individual raised above them by his merit. Soldiers and sailors, in
general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly sot, or the son of
a man who has 'plenty of brass'--their own term--but will mutiny against
the just orders of a skilful and brave officer who 'is no better than
themselves.' There was the affair of the _Bounty_, for example: Bligh
was one of the best seamen that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of
men; proofs of his seamanship he gave by steering, amidst dreadful
weather, a deeply-laden boat for nearly four thousand miles over an
almost unknown ocean; of his bravery at the fight of Copenhagen, one of
the most desperate ever fought, of which, after Nelson, he was the hero;
he was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew of the _Bounty_
mutinied against him, and set him, half-naked, in an open boat, with
certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with the
ship. Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or
groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was 'no better than
themselves'; he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate, nor
possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The writer knows what he is writing
about, having been acquainted in his early years with an individual who
was