The Statesman.
London, England, 1809-06-30 00:00:00

THE STATESMAN.

poor fellow for boase-breaking " Soppese you were to
say this s and I, pretending to give no account of what
rot had AO, were w drop the former part of the tea
twice. and accuse you of saying, " It is a shame to bang
a poor fellow for bouse-breaking. This, tboagh true in
worth, would be shamefully false in sneoning—and yet even
this would not he more base and detestable than the puhlira-
Poo of o hich I have spoken above, and which the public
robbers are circulating at such an impulse es peace all over
the kingdom, and particularly in this county.—They have
sent hinder& nod thousands of copies Into Hampshire. All the
gentlemen who Mord the last requisition have received them
for orttliitt4. The post.millee at Winchester has charged only
a penny for their transmission to To 3 find, for balance. The
robners, as they hate, tame down from London hi their car-
riages, have brought wills them whole bales, which they have
tossed not In all whom theyonet or overtook apes tile road.
A few da VA ago a last lau fall of ke aid she peculators passed
through Alton, tossing oat these pamphlets as they went. The
thmg has bet n put lam all the I ans. and other public
particularly is Wincliestt-r, witere it would certainly be put
into the Churches if they wer: places of much resort; for the
Winchcster Clergy appear to he perrectly convinced, that the
way to prove that their brother, Dr. O'Meara, di 1 nothing
that was wrong, is to :Ouse me ; that the way to white-wash
the church is to corer me over with dirt.
Now, then, what is this publiea:ioo, upon which the
fanl-knaves rely for the demolition of my char teterf—lt
consists of certain doceinents, relating to the afore-men-
tioned Court-Martial, and, as I shall show %o'i by and by,
these docummt-, as the) stand in phi, put lrrctiou, prt seri to
ttic reader a tissue of the vilest fal4-bond=. But art I most
give soiniohing of a hi-tory of the Cncrt-Martial itse!f.
Late in tre car 1791, I teturned to Ete.•'.and with my regi-
ment, which lowly., at Portsmouth in the In-tath of Novem-
her. 5: .11 after that, i, being then thr Seriet-Ma-
jor of Oi_ regiment, asked for try dischar,;e, which, after
:natty effort, set titr part of the emmiumling Officer. Ma',or
lord Edward Fitzgerald, and of Central Freriet i. k, the
Colonel of the regiment, to prevail on sir t (:pot: a
promise of tieing specially recoineten.!•il to the K hie, as
worthy of being iiltnediatelv promoted to the mak of En-
sign), I obtained in the following words:
" By the Ri4h; item Mainr Lori Edward .ritzgeraltl,
commanding his Majesty's 54th Regiment of root, si hereof
Liest.-Gen. Frederick is Colonel—These are to remit that
the bearer hereof, William Coldsett, Serie-tin-Major in the
aforesaid resinsent, has served honestly and faithfully for the
space of eight years, nearly seven of which he has been a
non-commissioned officer, and of that time he has been fire
years Serieant-Major to the reAiment; but having were ear-
nestly applied for hinliseharge, he, in comiderittlan of his
good behaviour, ar.l the cervices he has rendered the regi-
ment, is hereby tzader my hand and seal
of the regiment, at Port-intoner., this l' ::h d . v of December,
1;91. " FirMIERAI.9."

" l'oarsstenrsr, L'lrn Dcc. I;9l.—Serjeant-Major Cols-
bett ha% in?: •710.4 prekingly applied for hi,. tE,citarge, at Ma-
jor Lon! I.J Fitagt rata's request General Fr:Aerie:: has
granted l'i.ederic:s has ordered Nlajor Lord Ed-
ward Fitrger.tid ;t; return ede Fierjeant-nt!lr Clank' for his
beh.:rinat ;ot t 7 quir.t.t the time Of being in the rt.-
-0.41.ir Lord Fdward adth heal t_ thanks
to h'ISP Ili. '

objet of tri:. et.f..tting the anus, to TVltit h I was,
perh.ni-, rt :re attar hed than any man Cat ever lived in the
sr old, was, to bring certain officers to justice fir ;raving,
%mon: ways, soron;cel but I 10:s public and Vic snldies. With
this object is view, I swim strai.fut to London, the moment I
lend 31.1ainoti any liberty 'awl mewed try Ft-rimiest refer",
which, as von will readily conceive, would not hare been
the ca,e if I had not first got me discharge. I must here go
back a little, awl give:tit account of the inrasares which I had
tat c preparivors to this roseeut'on; and, in order to give
the reader a full view of ail the circumstances, in order that
be mos be able to form a Jost op ion of what I was irk' the
array, i will give hem ashore account of my progress. I en-
ji,ie • at Chstittmx in i7e4; I joined the regiment, iii Nova-
Scotia, in 1785; I was almost immediately trade a corporal;
lea fen maths afterwards I was made a Serj_eant ; and, at
Use cad of about a year and a half, I was made the Scr-
jeant-Illajor.—Whlle I was a corporal, I was made clerk to
the regiment. In a very abort time, the waole of the
business, in that way, Ml Into my hands and, at the
end of about a year, neither adjuta.t, paymaster, •ir
quarter - ma-ter, could move an inch ss ithout my assist-
ance. The military part esf the regiment's affairs fel under
my care in lilt,. mapper. About (i is time, the new discipline,
as it was called—that Is to say, the mode of handling the
asestet, and of marching. tke. called " Dandaa's Systees..'
was sent out to efts la little books, which wem to he stedi-d
by the office. s o 1 earl regiment, and the rules of which were
to be immediately confcirmed to.— rhough any old woman
might have written such a book ; though it was excessively
radish, from beginning to cud; still, it was to he comp)i. d
with; it ordered aod commanded a total change; and this
change was to he completed before the next auutial review
took place.—To make thi..; elwAe wa, kit to me, who was
.it liven twenty years of ar.e, whi'w not a single officer iu
the regiment paid lea.t attention in the matter; so. fiat
when the time came f..r the annual ievic sr, I, them a
corporal, had to gise lecture; of instruction in the officers
themselves, the Colutiel aut exeep•rd ; I.•r several of
them, if not for all of them. I had to ina'se out, upon large
card', tshich they bought for the purpose, little plans of
the poriti-n of the regiment, tnrether with lift; of the
words of cornmard, w!delo thev le•i! to give in the field.—ls
it any wonder, that we evrenenco d,Aals 2 There was I,
at the review, upon the flank of the firroadier Company,
with my worsted shoulder-knot, and my great, fii,:rh, coarse,
bniry cap; confinnnied in the tanks arrion,-.t other men, while
those who were commanding in to move my hands or my
feet, thus or thus, were, in fact, uttering words, wi:ich I
lad taught them; and here, it, every iltins eveepting mere
authority, my inferiors; and ought to have been commanded
me.—lt was impossible for retlecti-ms of titi. t.rt tint to
intrude themselve-; sod, 11-4 I advanced is cape serve, I felt
mss and less respect for those whom I was colapt•licrl :o obey.
One suffers injustice from men, of great endowments of mind,
with much lest of heart-burning that from men, whom one
cannot help despising: :red, ifmv officers had been men of ma-
nifest supet iority of mind, I should, perhaps, not have so soon
conceived the project of bringing them, or some of them, at
least, to Shame and punishment for the d even flagrant breaches
of the law, cimriiitted by them, and for their manifold, their
eodlessc. wrer.,?• again-t the soldier; and against the public.—
This project h.as conceived soearly as the year 1787, when an
airair ha pp. r.,-(1, that first gave me a full insight into regimen-
tal justice. It was ...Melly this: that the Quarter Master, who
Fad the of the men's provisions to them, kept abort e
rurr~l. part of it In hints, If. This, t I:e old serjeants told me, had
beer, the r fur many yeasts; and, they were quite asto-
ni-lied and terrified at the idea of my complaining of it. This
I OA. however ; hut, the reception 1 met with convinced me,
that i must never make another complaint, 'till I gat sak to
England, anti safe out of the reach of that most carious of
courts, a Court Martial.—From this time forward, I began to
collect materials for an exposure, upon my return t • Logiand.
I had ample opportunities fee this. being the keeper of all
the books, of every sort, in the regituent, and he owing the
-B—i...oi...fairs banes than any other man. Bat, the win

ter previous to our return to England, I tbbugbt if necessary
ti make extracts from books, lest the books themselves
should be destroyed. And, here begins the history of the
famous Comet Marlint. In order to be able to prove that
these extracts were correct, it was necessary that I should
have a attune as to their being Eros copies. This was a very
ticklish point. Ore foolish step here, would have Dent me
down to tbe ranks with a pair of bloody shoulders. Yet,
it was necessary to have the witness. I he•itated many
mantis,. At one Hine, I had given the thing up. I dreamt
twenty times, I dare No, of my papers being discovered,
and of my being tried and flogged half to death. At last,
however, some fresh art of injustice towards us made me
Kt all danger at defiance. I opened my project to a corpo-
ral, whole name was Wittinne Balboni, who m rote in the
office a .der toe, who was a very honest kilos% , who was
very much bound to me, for my goodnem to him, and who
was. with the sole eiception of myself, the only sober man
in the whole regiment. To work we we'll, and durin,; 0
lung winter, while the rest were booting and snoring, we
gutted no small part of the regimental books, rolls, nod
other documents. Our way was this : to take a ropy, sign
it with our names, and clap the regimental seal to it, FO that
we might be able to swear to it. when produced in Court.
AU these papers were put into a little hex, which I myself
had made for the purpose. When we came to Portsmouth,
there was a talk of searching all the boxes, which gave
n• great alarm, and induced us to take out all the papers,
pet them in a bat;. and trust them to a custom-house °Seer,
who conveyed them ou shore. to his own house, whence I ra-
mmed them in a few days after.

Thu: prepared, I went to London, and, on the 14th of Ja-
nuary, 119-2, I wrote to the then Seeretarg at War, Sir Geo.
Yonge, stating my situation, my business/okb him, and my
intentions ; enclosing him a letter or petition, from myself to
the King, stating the subAance of all the complaints I had to
make ; and which letter I requested Sir George Yonge to
lay before the King —I waited from the 11th to the 24th of
.lanu try, without receiving any answer at all, and then all 1
heard .was, that he wished to see me at the War-Ofike. At
the IVar-011ice I au shown into an anti-chamber amongst
Lumerous anxious-looking men, who, every time the door,
vrilich led to the great man, was opened, earthed their eves
th-it way with a mistiness regular and as uniform as if they
had I.cen drilled to it. These people eyed me from bead to
foot, and I shall never forget their look, when they mw that I
was admitted into Paradi.e without being detained a single mi-
nate in Purgivory.—Sir t ;eorge Yonge heard my story, and
that was appareuly all he wanted of me. I was to hear from
him again in a day or two; and, after waiting for fifteen days
without hearing from him, or any one else, upon the sub-
ject, I wrote to him again, reminding him, that I had,
from the first, told him, that I had no other business is
London ; that my stuck of mossy was necessarily
scanty; and. that to detain me is London eves to rain
mc. Indeed, I had, in the whole world, but about 300
guineas, whirls was a great deal for a person in my situation
to have ,axed. Eery week in London, especially as, by
way of episode, I had now married, took, at kast, a couple
of guittels from my stock. 14 therefore, began to be very
inpatient, and, indeed, to I c very suspicious, that military
justice in England, was pretty nearly a-kin to military justice
lr Nova.ccotia and New llrunswirk. The letter I now
wrote was dated on the 10th of February, to which I got an
answer on toe 15th, thou,;h the answer might have been
written in a moment. I nas, in this answer, informed. that
it was the intention to try the arcw.ed upon @sty one of the
charges 'which I bad preferred; and, from a new-modelled
list of charges, seat toe by the Judge Advocate, on the 2Sd
of Febea:.ry, it appeared, that, even of ttroseeharges that
were suffered to remain, the parts the most material were
omitted. But, this was not all : I had all along insisted, that
unless the Court-Martial were held io Loans, I could not
think of appearing at it ; because, if held ie a garrisoned place
like Portsmouth, the thing must he a mere mockery. In spite
of this, bewever, the Judge Advocate's letter of the 23l of
February informed me, that the Court was to be held at
Purtsinvuth, or Ililsea. I remonstrated against this, and
demanded that my remonstrance should be laid before the
King, which, on the 29th, the Judge Advocate promised
should be done by himself; but, on the sth of March, the
Judge Advocate informed me, that be bad laid my remon-
strance before whom, think you!
Not the King, bat the accused parties; who, of course,
thought the court ought to assemble at Portsmoath or Hilt's,
and doubtless for the very, very reasons that led me to object
to its being held there. •

Plainly seeing what was going forward, T. du the:ids of
March, made, in a triter to Mr. Pitt, a representati4Of the
whale eme,,giving him a history of the obstacles I had met
with, wilieh letter concluded thus: " I have now, Sir, dune
all a man ran do in such a ease. 1 have proceeded regularly,
and, I inay add, respectfully, from first to last : if I am al-
lowed to serve my country by prosecuting men who have in-
jured it. I shall do it: if I am thwarted and pressed down
hs those, whose office it is to assist and support me, I earnest
do it: in either case, I shall he satisfied with having,daoe tmv
duts, and shall leave the world to make a comparison be-
tween me and the men retinas I have accused "—This letter
( which, by-the-bve, the public robbers !ise not published)
had t be cacti of thafiging the place of the Court-martial, which
was now to he held in London; but, as to my other great
ground of complaint, the leaving of the regiugentat books min-
scenred, it had no effect at a:1; and, it will he recollected,
that, without those boas, there could be, as to most of the
wei,;hty charges, no proof produced, without briuging for-
ward Corpses! Bestland, and the danger of doing that will be
presently sees.—But, now, mark well as to these hooks; as to
this great source of that sort of evidence, which was not to be
brow beaten, or stifled by the dangers of the lash. Mark well
thew-tarts, and from t 'sem judge of what I had to expert in
the was of justice.—On the 22d of January, 1 wrote to Sir
George linage for the express purpose of having the books
secured ; that is to my, taken nut of the hands, and put out of
the reach, of the parties accused. Oa the 24th of January,
he told me, that Ii AD taken core to give diredions to
have thew demigods secured. On the 18th of Felruary, in an-
wer to a letter, le which I (upon information received
from the regiment) complained of the documents not bay-
ing been littered, he wrote to me, and I have now the
letter before me, signed with his own hand, that he would
write to the Colonel of the'reginimit about the books, &e.—
" Although," he, " I canon doubt bet that the regi-
mental books kayo ken properly secured." This was no the
IStk of Pearuary, mind ; aud, Bow it appears, from the do-
cuments, which the public robbers have pat forth, that the
first time any order for seeeriez the books was given, was
on the 15tA of March, though the Secretary told use he bad
done it so the 24th of January, and repeated his Medial le
writing, ao the ISA of February. There is quite magi* in
this fact alone to ?new the public what sort *feetl stl
of obtaining jostles.

Without these written documents, nothing of irarrtance
could he proved, roles* the non-commissioned officers and men
of the regiment shbeld happen to get the bett-T of their dread
of the lash; and, even thee, they could only speak from me-
mew,. All, therefore,dependesT upon tho-e written documents,
as to the principal charges. Therefore, as the Court-martial
was to assemble co the toith of Tarr ), I went down to Ports-
mouth on thr ?nth. in order to know fur certain what WM
betwase Of tht booths ; and I fuocd, as, indeed, I suspected

was the ease, that they bad never hews antra at all; that
they had been left is the hands of the accused from the 14th
of January to the very hoer of trial I and that, is short, my
request, *to this poi*, the positive condition as to this most
important matter, had been totally disregarded. —There re-
mained, then, notbiag to rest upon with *My but our ex-
tracts, confirmed by the evidence of Bestiand, the corporal,
who bad signed them aloft with me; and this I had solemnly
espied with him mot to have recourse to, unless he was first
out of the army; that is to say, oat of the reach of the vin-
dictive and bloody lash. He was a very little fellow; not
more than about five feet high, and had been set down to be
discharged when he Went to England; but, there was a sus-
picion of his correction with me, and, therefore, they re-
solved to keep him. It would bare been cruel, and even
trerfiditan, to have brought him forward under lath eirrent-
stances and, as there was no chance of doing any thing
without him, I resolved not to appear at the Court-Mar-
tial, unless the discharge of &ahead was first grasted.—
Accordingly, on the VUth of March, I wrote, (rein Prat-
ton, a village Dear Portsmouth, to the Judge Advocate,
stating over again all the obstacles that had been thrown
in my way, complaining particularly that the books and
documents bad been left in poissessioa of the accused,
contrary to my urgent request, and to the positive assurances
of the Secretary at War, and concluding by demanding the
discharge of a man, whom I should name, as the only condi-
tion upon which 1 would attend the Court-martial. I re-
quested nim to send me an answer by the ors* day, at night,
at alb fanner bilging; and told him, that, unless such answer
was received, he and those to whom my repeated applications
had been made, might do what they pleased with their
Court-Martial; far, that I confidently trusted, that a few
days would place me beyond the scope of their power. No
answer came, and, as I had learned, in the meanwhile, that
there %rasa design to prosecute me for sedition, that was an
additirmal motive to be quick in my movements. As
I was going down to Portsinutan, I met several of time ser-
jamb coming up, together with the music-mister; and, as
they bad none of them been in America, I wondered what
they coold be going to London for; but, up* any return, I
was told by a Capt. Lase, who bad been in the regiment,
that they had been brought up to swear, that, at an enter-
tainment given to them by are before my departure from the
regiment, I had drank " the destruction of the House of
Brususoick." This was false; but, I knew that that was no
reason why it should not be sworn by such persons and in
such a ease. I had talked pretty freely, upon the occa-
sion alluded to; but I had neither laid nor thought any
thing against the King, and, as to the Hann of Brunswick, I
hardly knew what it meant. My head was filled with the
corruptions and the baseness in the army. I knew nothing at
all about politic:. Nor would any threat of this sort have iu-
duced me to get out of the way for a moment; though it
certainly would, if I had known my danger; for glorious
" times were just then beginning. Of this,
however, I knew nothing at all. I did not know what the
Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act meant. When you
have a mind to do a thing, every trifle isau additional motive.
Lane, who had enlisted ne, and who had always shown
great kindness towards me, told me they would send me to
Botany Bay t and, I now verily believe, that, if I had re.
otairied, I should have famished a pretty good example
those who wished to correct military abases. I did not, how-
ever, leave England from this motive. I could nit obtain a
chance of bUCCraI, without exposing the back of my poor
faithful Mend Bestland, which, had I not pledged Impala*
to do, I would not have done. It was useless to appear, un-
less I could have tolerable fair play; sad, besides, it seemed
better to leave the whole set to do as they pleased, than to feu
made a Mortifitld witness of what it was quite evident they
had resolved to do.

ET* be concluded to-marrow.]

MONTAGU BURGOYNE, ESQ.

The following Letter from Montnnux ika-
GOTNEI of Mark-hall, Esq. Essex, is well worthy
of the perusal and consideration of the Free.
holders of that County, who will hare an oppor-
tunity of expressing their sentiments en the sub-
ject of it at the County Meeting at Chelsford,
which is to take place to-morrow :