support it. The present ministry were generally understood to think very differently from their predecessors regarding the battle of Navarino. While they admitted that admiral Codrington had done the country honour by the way in which the battle had been fought, they were far from thinking that it ought ever to have been fought at all. In this unsatisfactory state of feeling between the Admiralty and sir Edward, the emperor of Russia transmitted a second order to be worn by captain Dickinson, who had fought the Genoa, after her captain (Bathurst) fell in the action, and had since been promoted to the command of that ship. As captain Dickinson had already received an order from the same quarter, in common with the other officers engaged in the battle, the sending of this second order was supposed to originate in some mistake. When captain Dickinson applied to the Admiralty for permission to wear the order, the singularity of two being sent to him was observed; and the secretary of the Board wrote to sir Edward Codrington, requesting him to state, if he could give any explanation why this second order (of St. Vladimir) had been sent to captain Dickinson, in addition to that of St. Anne, which he had already obtained, and had received the king's permission to wear. In reply, sir Edward stated, that he supposed the mistake to have arisen from one order having been sent to the Mediterranean through the Russian admiral, without its having been known that another had been conferred in England through prince Lieven. This seemed to be enough,-but sir Edward did not stop here. He did not even satisfy himself with saying that captain

Dickinson had done no better than his brother officers; though no opinion at all on the captain's conduct was required. He went farther, and voluntarily stated, that he "had no reason to approve of the conduct of the Genoa from the time of the command having devolved on captain Dickinson." The Admiralty immediately informed sir Edward, that they had refused their consent to captain Dickinson's wearing the new order, being convinced it had been sent by mistake. They added, however, "Their lordships sanctioned captain Dickinson's receiving the first order (like the other officers commanding ships in the action at Navarino), because he had succeeded to the command of the Genoa after the captain had been carried below; but, observing in your letter that captain Dickinson's conduct in those circumstances was not satisfactory to you, they desire you will state the particulars in which you saw reason to disapprove the conduct of duct of captain Dickinson, in order that their lordships may judge whether it may be necessary to take any further proceedings with regard to him." Sir Edward Codrington, in reply to this request, stated a variety of particulars in which he considered captain Dickinson to have fallen short of his duty. The Admiralty deemed them so grave, that they immediately ordered captain Dickinson to be tried by a Court-martial; and sir Edward Codrington was called on to prove his charges. Sir Edward protested against what he deemed so irregular a demand. He had made the charges, he said, only to prevent the Admiralty from being misled, by ignorance of facts, in the distribution of honorary distinctions; but that he had never

reckoned on being required to prove them by evidence before a Courtmartial. He declined, therefore, having any thing to do with the inquiry, as one which he neither desired nor had instigated. This seemed to mean, that he was entitled to make, behind a man's back, private charges, ruinous to his professional reputation and hopes, but that he was in no respect bound to prove them to be true. The Admiralty of course could see neither the fairness nor the expediency of such a course. By ordering the Court-martial themselves, they had saved sir Edward from the ungracious situation of being formally the prosecutor; but as the charges had come from him, in an official letter to the Board, they justly held him bound to substantiate these charges, by his own evidence, or that of others who might be able to support them,-the more especially as captain Dickinson denied every one of the imputations. After a great deal of backwardness on the part of sir Edward, in which he still maintained, that though he had made these injurious statements to the Board, he could not be called on to take any farther part in the transaction, the Board requested him to state distinctly, whether he was willing that the trial should proceed, on the understanding that he was bound to prove his allegations; and if he was not willing that it should so proceed, they informed him that they would hold themselves left at liberty to consider captain Dickinson's conduct as free from all imputation, and would treat him accordingly. Sir Edward consented to proceed.

Captain Dickinson was accordingly arraigned before a Courtmartial, held on board the Victory,

at Portsmouth, on charges bearing that, from not making proper use of the springs, ordered by the admiral, on the day of the battle of Navarino, to be placed on the anchors, the broadside of the Genoa was not directed to her regular opponent in the Ottoman line; and that, in such a position, she could not fire any of her guns, except those of the stern and quarters, without endangering the Asia and others of the allied squadrons on her larboard side, and the Albion and others on her starboard side ;that shot, which injured the Asia, and which came in that direction, were apparently fired by the Genoa; and that the Genoa did positively fire into the Albion, although the Albion had an English ensign at her mast-head to prevent mistakes;-that, captain Dickinson having been reproved by the admiral for not using the Genoa's springs, and having accounted for it by his inability to get the men from their guns for that purpose, it was nevertheless asserted in the ship's log-book that the springs were used;-that the account of the battle given in the Genoa's log-book erroneously implied, that she had three Ottoman ships of the line opposed to her on her starboard side, three sixty-gun frigates on her larboard side and ahead, and a doublebanked frigate astern ;-that captain Dickinson returned captain Bathurst as killed, and procured the surgeon's signature to that return, knowing that he did not die till many hours after the battle was over, and that he retained his faculties to give orders during the whole time of the battle;-and that, by this mis-statement, he gained an honorary distinction, which might not otherwise have been conferred

on him that the refittal of the Genoa for leaving Navarino, and engaging the batteries if requisite, was unjustifiably tardy, and that the same slackness prevailed on her way to Malta;-that the Genoa's mizen-mast was suffered to go by the board on the 21st, the day after the battle, for want of being properly secured ;-that the Genoa continued firing after the battle was over, at the risk and to the probable injury of the allied ships, until hailed from the Asia to cease -that Captain Dickinson himself presented to the admiral a letter, in the nature of what is called a round-robin, purporting to come from the crew of the Genoa, and desiring the admiral to appoint him, in preference to any other officer, to succeed captain Bathurst as captain of the Genoa.

From the meeting of the Court till its final judgment, twenty days elapsed. A detail of the evidence will be found in another part of the volume. Captain Dickinson was honourably acquitted of all the charges, some of which were declared to be frivolous. The sending to the admiral the round-robin mentioned in the charges, was the only act at all questionable. Captain Dickinson, it was clearly shown, was not privy to its concoction; yet even to transmit it was wrong. But it was shown that he had very soon seen and acknowledged his error, -that the admiral had expressed himself satisfied, and, as a proof of it, had given up the document itself; and certainly it ought not now to have been revived, at the distance of nearly two years. The evidence furnished some excellent examples, in the person of sir Ed

ward himself, of the little confidence that can be placed in a man's recollection of what he hears or sees, not merely during the hurry and confusion of actual battle, but even after it has ceased. One charge was, that captain Dickinson had returned his predecessor, captain Bathurst, as having been killed in action, whereas he had lived till next morning. Sir Edward stated positively that he had gone on board the Genoa in the evening, to see captain Bathurst; that captain Dickinson had conducted him down to the cockpit, and had been present at his conversation with captain Bathurst; and sir Edward stated it as a great gravamen of the charge, that captain Dickinson, having done this after the action, should nevertheless have returned captain Bathurst as killed during the action. It was clearly proved that sir Edward's memory was playing him false in all this. He had gone on board the Genoa, and visited captain Bathurst in the cockpit; but it was not captain Dickinson who received him; it was not captain Dickinson who conducted him down; captain Dickinson was not in the cockpit, nor present at the conversation. It was the firstlieutenant of the Genoa whom sir Edward had mistaken for the captain. As to the charge itself, considering that captain Bathurst was mortally wounded, most men found a sufficient answer in the fact, that the London Gazette of the battle of Trafalgar had announced lord Nelson as being killed in action, though he lived to order the fleet to anchor, after the victory had been achieved.

clined likewise to insist that the ministers should remain in office only to further the views, and adopt the policy, of the party who had made them. On the other hand, the royalist party was still too strong, and the favour of the monarch towards their principles and their persons was much too manifest, to give the ministry any security against a sudden dissolution, if they blindly followed in the train of the popular leaders. Thus no party trusted them; what was worse, no party obeyed or was controlled by them. Instead of being a powerful government, government, compelling respect from all other parties by its own substantive weight, its intrinsic weakness reduced it to the necessity of occa sionally seeking succour from both. It had to inquire, not what policy would be most pleasing to itself, but what was the policy that would be demanded by those on whom it was dependent. The popular party was now triumphant in the Chamber of Deputies, and the measures of the new ministry had hitherto partaken of a popular character. But the people be lieved that the new ministry had been friendly to the popular cause, only in so far as they could not safely venture to do otherwise; and that to insure the maintenance and progress of the popular cause, it was necessary that the popular party should continue to act, almost as if ministers were their opponents, and to force upon them such measures as the popular spirit might require.

The difficulties, with which the peculiar position of the administration surrounded it, were increased, in the beginning of the present year, by the retirement from office of the Count de Ferronay, the

Minister for Foreign Affairs, one of its most popular and respected members. Indisposition compelled him to withdraw from public life. His character and high connexions, the sacrifices which he had formerly made for the royal cause, and the zeal which he had recently evinced in support of the charter, his conciliatory temper, and the confidence which the moderation of his principles inspired into the court as well as into the people, had rendered him of infinite importance to the existing cabinet, because they gave him great influence with the parties whom it was necessary to manage. The jealousy of these parties made it a work of much embarrassment to find a successor. To name a candidate who was thought to lean to the court-party, immediately called forth a thousand denunciations against the ministry, as betraying the cause of the people; and to seek a minister among the liberals, was to rouse the wrath of the court and of the priests. About the time of Count de Ferronay's retirement, Prince Polignac, the French Ambassador at London, made an unexpected visit to Paris. It was immediately said, that the king had sent for him to fill the vacant office, and change the spirit of the too liberal cabinet. Count Portalis was charged with having sent the invitation unknown to his colleagues. The proposal, or the supposition, was received in Paris with loud dissatisfaction. It was objected to the prince, that he was a confirmed enemy of all popular rights; that he had been a partisan of Villèle, and would set up anew that minister's system of internal oppression and degradation; that he was a declared champion of the Congregation, and would lend all his influence to that faction of