establishment was the most pitiful of all the proceedings." Here is the charge -and it is a serious one-"that the soldiery disregarded the orders of their officers-and could not be restrained from plunder and that much private property was destroyed." What says Major Pringle?

"Subsequent to the defeat of the Americans at Bladensburg, General Ross advanced towards Washington with 1000 men, and about eight o'clock in the evening arrived at an open piece of ground two miles from the Federal city. Soon after our arrival I was informed by the adjutant of the regiment that General Ross wished to see me immediately. On coming to the General, I was informed by him that he had ordered the grenadier company of the 21st regiment to parade for a particular service, and that I was to command them, and about 30 men more, making in all 100 rank and file. General stated to me that he was about to advance into Washington, accompanied by this body of men only, who were to act as his advanced guard in approaching the city. That, on my arrival, I was to take up a position with my men, to place sentries at the different entrances into the city, to send patrols round every half hour, to prevent any soldier or seaman belonging to the expedition from entering the city, and on no account whatever to perThese mit my men to go into any house.

The

erders were most punctually attended to. I went round with every patrol myself, I paraded my men every hour, to see that none were absent, and for twelve hours held possession of the capital of the United States, with that handful of British soldiers, and preserved its peace."

*

*

farther down than to eight o'clock in the morning of the 25th. It is therefore good for nothing; every house in Washington MIGHT HAVE BEEN PLUNDERED (!!) between eight o'clock on the morning of the 25th, and the night of the 25th, when General Ross commenced retiring." Indeed! Every house in Washington might have been plundered under the eye of General Ross himself, by a soldiery whom it was found impossible to restrain ! "This," says Major Pringle calmly, "Mr Stuart will hardly venture to affirm. From what I know of the character of General Ross, I am convinced, if any soldier had been found plundering, or in any way molesting an unoffending citizen, in twelve hours he would have been shot, and the whole army must have known it."

66

But Mr Stuart will not even allow that Washington was not plundered by the soldiery between the evening of the 24th, and the morning of the 25th, while Major Pringle, with his hundred men, were employed in preserving it, and its inhabitants, from all outrage. He waxes wittyand says, Major Pringle would have us to believe that he was omnipresent in a city above four miles long, and of very considerable breadth." The city at that time contained about 400 houses-General Ross thought 100 men would be sufficient for the purpose-Major Pringle, who commanded them, affirms they were so-and Mr Stuart may be allowed to enjoy his sarcasm.

In corroboration of the facts which came under his own observation, Major Pringle, in his first letter, quotes one or two remarks from American publications. The Columbian Sentinel says, "the British officers pay inviolable respect to private property, and no peaceable citizen is molested." A writer from Baltimore, under date August 27, 1814, says, "The enemy, I learn, treated the inhabitants of Washington well;" and Mr Gales, the mouth-piece of the Government, and the bitter enemy of the British, says, "when we remarked that private property had, in general, been respected by the enemy, we spoke what we believed; greater respect was certainly paid to private property than has usually been exhibited by the enemy in his

marauding parties; no houses were half as much plundered by the enemy as by the knavish rogues about the town, who profited by the general distress." And the George Town paper, 8th September, says, "the list of plunder and destruction, copied from a vile and libellous print of that city, (Washington,) into several federal papers, is a gross and abominable fabrication, known to be such by every inhabitant; most of the plunder was committed by rabble of the place, fostered among the citizens, and subsequent to the departure of the British troops; it is but justice to say, that the British army preserved moderation and discipline, with respect to private property, unexampled in the annals of war."

It must be most painful to Mr Stuart's friends-it is so to us-to hear him treating all this testimony with contempt; and asserting, that "he is guiltless of the slightest error in point of fact!" He accuses Major Pringle "of a degree of unfairness, probably without example in such a controversy as the present," in having stopped short at the word "distress," in his quotation from the National Intelligencer-Mr Gales having said, "that several private buildings were wantonly destroyed, and some of those persons who remained in the city were scandalously maltreated."" But what evidence is there," asks the Major, that the "knavish rogues," mentioned by Mr Gales, were not the perpetrators of such scandalous proceedings?" None. But the very passage from Gales, which Mr Stuart accuses Major Pringle of unprecedented unfairness for not having quoted, does, strange to say, present the strongest proof of the perfect truth of the Major's statements. Here it is-as given by Mr Stuart with a most ludicrous air of triumph. "Among the private buildings destroyed were the dwelling-house occupied by Mr Robert Sewall, (formerly rented by Mr Gallatin,) from behind which a gun was fired at General Ross, which killed the horse he rode !" Will Mr Stuart say that that house should not have been destroyed?

This same Mr Gales says, other houses," and some rope-walks, were destroyed, without any pretence being

assigned therefor, that we know of." Perhaps General Ross did not think himself called on to assign to Mr Gales any pretence for setting on fire all he chose to set on fire; and here becomes manifest the confusion of Mr Stuart's ideas, and the stupid way in which he confounds one charge with another, vitiating his whole argument. The charge against the British Army, which Major Pringle proves to be false, is," that the soldiers could not be restrained from plunder." But Gales is manifestly charging General Ross with giving orders to destroy, or set on fire, certain property, without assigning any pretence " for so doing; that General Ross did so, we have here only Gales' assertion, and it is good for little; but that the soldiers could not be restrained from plunder, Mr Stuart shews not a tittle of proofwhile Major Pringle clears them from such a charge, to the satisfaction, we venture to affirm, of all impartial persons on either side of the Atlantic. How could a gentleman like Mr Stuart, have the face to publish such a calumny on the British Army, with such testimony lying before him to their "moderation and discipline, with respect to private property, unparalleled in the annals of war," and that, too, from an enemy galled, and irritated, and defeated,-merely because one manGales-chose, on his own assertion, to attribute to them certain violations of moderation and discipline, without one particle of proof? Had not the conduct of our soldiers been such as did them infinite honour, Mr Stuart would not have been left so much at a loss to find accusations against them, as to be obliged to pick out a few words of blame from a multitude of words of praise-but would have had reams of rage and indignation to refer to-for the Americans do not mince matters with us -and no wonder they were incensed by the capture of Washington.

Mr Stuart says, "that the proceedings of the British Army form the subject of Major Pringle's first letter, and that if the gallant Major had allowed my book to speak for itself, instead of giving his readers partial extracts from my narrative, it would have been hardly requisite for me to say a single word in vindication

of the accuracy of this part of it. But the quotations are so obviously extracted with a view to serve a purpose, that I must call upon you to peruse the whole of the following passage in the twenty-first chapter of the third edition of my work." Major Pringle does not seek to prevent Mr Stuart's book from "speaking for itself," and it is doing so at this hour to the public; but it is not a little unreasonable to blame him for not having loaded his letter with five heavy paragraphs from that work, when his objections applied but to a few sentences, containing a severe, and, as he thinks, false charge against the British Army, on its expedition to Washington.

"The

quotations," says he, "undoubt edly were extracted with a view to serve a purpose; the purpose was to contradict certain assertions made by Mr Stuart, derogatory to the character of that part of the British Army with which I acted in America."

But as Mr Stuart is proud of the passage, here it is entire.

"By far the greatest part of the present library belonged to President Jeffer son, and was sold by him to Congress, after the destruction of the library and of the public buildings at Washington by the British, under Sir George Cockburn and General Ross, in the year 1814. This expedition, to the merit or demerit of which Sir George Cockburn is fully entitled, as the official despatch from General Ross expressly states that Sir George suggested it, was, and is at this moment, viewed by all parties in the United States with disgust, and united all the American people, especially the New Englanders, who had previously been averse to the war, in decided hostility to the British. If the dockyard and public stores at Washington had been alone destroyed, the transaction would have been justifiable, but the destruction of the Capitol, including the Senate-House and the House of Representatives, of the Treasury and the War Office, and of the President's palace, and the great bridge across the Potomac, nearly two miles broad, all of which it was admitted in the official despatch were set fire to and consumed, was an act unworthy a great nation, and contrary to the received usages of war.

"Almost all the great capitals of Europe had, within the dozen years previous to the capture of the seat of legislature of the United States, been in the possession

of the French army; Paris was soon after occupied by the Allied armies, yet in no case was any unmilitary building destroyed, far less any valuable state papers Even Louis the Fourteenth or books.

acted very differently.

"During his war with England, instead of returning thanks to his officers, as the British did to those who commanded at Washington, for destroying a building not devoted to military purposes, he sent them to jail. The Frenchmen had landed on the Eddystone rocks, on which the lighthouse was then erecting, and carried the workmen to France, together with their tools. While the captives lay in prison, the transaction came to the knowledge of the French monarch, who immediately ordered the prisoners to be released, and the captors, who were expecting a reward for the achievement, to be confined in their stead, declaring, that, though he was at war with England, he was not at war with mankind. therefore directed the men to be sent back to their work with presents.

He

"The library, and a great part of the state papers of the nation, were destroyed with the public buildings. I heard many anecdotes of this much to be regretted incursion. The commanders had directed private property to be respected, but it was impossible to restrain the soldiery. Much private property was destroyed. Mr Elliot was with the army. His house was sacked. The destruction of Mr Gales' printing establishment was the most pitiful of all the proceedings. His father had emigrated from Britain above twenty years previously, and Mr Gales himself conducted a newspaper at Washington, devoted to the American cause. For this reason, as it was supposed, an order was issued for destroying his property by fire; but a lady, who lived in the neighbourhood, entreated that it might be recalled, because it was but too probable that her property, which adjoined, would fall a prey to the flames. Sir George Cockburn, who had issued the order, was so far moved by her entreaties, as to limit the destruction to the printing-presses, and to the establishment within the walls. It is asserted in the American history of the war, that Sir George himself overlooked this part of the work.

"Although the Americans had suffered much from Sir George Cockburn's piratical expeditions on the Chesapeake, and his destruction of French Town, as well as from the establishment of a rendezvous for runaway negroes, on an island of the Chesapeake, who had been armed by him and again put on shore, they were not at the time aware, that it

himself having set fire to the Navyyard, a frigate, a sloop, and the fort which protected the sea-approach to Washington. General Ross's people must have had quite enough to do; and they no doubt did it well; but neither here nor anywhere else, now or at any other time, was it found impossible to restrain them from plundering the houses of the citizens of Washington. Nothing can be imagined more absurd than the interrogations Mr Stuart here puts to the Major. "Who destroyed the Treasury, and the War-Office, and the President's palace? Was it not part of the British army that was employed in this work of devastation? Does Major Pringle deny that Sir George Cockburn himself superintended and gave directions for the destruction of Mr Gales' printing establishment? Was this proceeding consistent with the respect which was directed to be paid to private property ?"

What, in the name of goodness, has all this to do with the matter in hand? The Major lets Mr Stuart take his swing. It was-most unquestionably-the British army that did all this; but will Mr Stuart only look for a moment at the words in italics. So far from their substantiating the charge against the soldiers that "they could not be restrained," here they are acting under the direction of their own General. Now that General had issued orders to respect private property, and Major Pringle has proved that it was respected in a manner unexampled in the annals of war." But the General thought Mr Gales' printing establishment deserved to be excepted from the general security; and so do we-and so do hundreds of thousands of men as intelligent and patriotic as Mr Stuart, for the said Gales was a pestilent fellow-and we like as much as Mr Stuart dislikes the following spirited sentences in a letter from a true British tar. "The half printed paper you find enclosed, I took myself from the press of the famous Republican printer, Mr Joe Gales. He will launch no more thunders at us, for we broke his establishment up, and scatter'd his types and sheets to the winds. Gales' occupation's gone." But not without being immortalized in the indignant lamentations

of this the most eloquent of all our Scottish patriots. Yet Mr Stuart rather forgets himself a little in his invectives against Admiral Cockburn. He tells us that a lady, fearing her property, which adjoined the printing-office, might be involved in the fire, if it were burnt, beseeched the Admiral to recall his order-and that he did so, and contented himself with the destruction of the printingpresses. Oh! the barbarian!

Mr Stuart will not hear of retaliation by the British-but says not a single syllable in reprobation of "the design seriously entertained, as he avers, by his noble Americans, to send a fast-sailing vessel to the coast of Ireland, to destroy Cross Trevor, the "beautiful property of General Ross," then inhabited by his wifeso soon, alas! to be a widow. Of that General Ross, who spared Gales' printing-office at a word from a lady whose house might be endangered by the fire! "Indeed!" says Major Pringle, with a feeling that does him honour-" Magnanimous resolution of this brave and generous nation! A set of men were to cross the Atlantic with all the malice prepense of premeditated marauders and incendiaries, for the purpose of attacking the property of an unoffending and defenceless woman, whose husband, by the time this design could have been put in execution, had fallen, in the hour of victory, and with his last breath had recommended 'a young and unprovided family to the protection of his King and country. I do trust that it is unnecessary for me to tell Mr Stuart, that I do not quote this passage as receiving from him countenance or support in any way. I am quite sure that he is as incapable as any man alive of viewing it in any other light than that of unqualified detestation; but let us hear no more of these sticklers for the usages of civilized warfare.'”

Mr Stuart talks very big about the destruction of the two-mile-long bridge across the Potomac-which, nevertheless, he says, " lies in a nutshell." It seems it was upon that part of the river above the city, but the operations of the British were confined to the city, and that part the river below it-argal, it was contrary to the usages of war to de

of