steadfast reliance upon whose bravery it lay
down every night in tranquillity,--men who had dared everything for
their king and country, and in whose breasts patriotism, although
suppressed for the time, could never be extinguished,--irritated by
ungrateful neglect on the one hand, and by seditious advisers on the
other, turned the guns which they had so often manned in defence of the
English flag against their own countrymen and their own home, and, with
all the acrimony of feeling ever attending family quarrels, seemed
determined to sacrifice the nation and themselves, rather than listen to
the dictates of reason and of conscience.

Doubtless there is a point at which endurance of oppression ceases to be
a virtue, and rebellion can no longer be considered as a crime; but it
is a dangerous and intricate problem, the solution of which had better
not be attempted. It must, however, be acknowledged, that the seamen,
on the occasion of the first mutiny, had just grounds of complaint, and
that they did not proceed to acts of violence until repeated and humble
remonstrance had been made in vain.

Whether we act in a body or individually, such is the infirmity and
selfishness of human nature, that we often surrender to importunity that
which we refuse to the dictates of gratitude,--yielding for our own
comfort, to the demands of turbulence, while quiet unpretending merit is
overlooked and oppressed, until, roused by neglect, it demands, as a
right, what policy alone should have granted as a favour.

Such was the behaviour, on the part of government, which produced the
mutiny at the Nore.

What mechanism is more complex than the mind of man? And as, in all
machinery, there are wheels and springs of action not apparent without
close examination of the interior, so pride, ambition, avarice, love,
play alternately or conjointly upon the human mind, which, under their
influence, is whirled round like the weathercock in the hurricane, only
pointing for a short time in one direction, but for that time
steadfastly. How difficult, then, to analyse the motives and
inducements which actuated the several ringleaders in this dreadful
crisis!

Let us, therefore, confine ourselves to what we do really know to have
been the origin of discontent in one of these men, whose unfortunate
career is intimately connected with this history.

Edward Peters was a man of talent and education. He had entered on
board the --- in a fit of desper