“the gallant”—­is he?  We will thank Mr Bennett to tell us, who was that officer subsequently seen walking about in Ceylon, no matter whether in Western Columbo, or in Eastern Trincomale, long enough for reaping his dishonour, though, by accident, not for a court-martial?  Behold, what a curse rests in this British island upon those men, who, when the clock of honour has sounded the hour for their departure, cannot turn their dying eyes nobly to the land of their nativity—­stretch out their hands to the glorious island in farewell homage, and say with military pride—­as even the poor gladiators (who were but slaves) said to Caesar, when they passed his chair to their death “Morituri te salutamus!” This man and Mr Bennett knows it, because he was incrusted with the leprosy of cowardice, and because upon him lay the blood of those to whom he should have been in loco parentis, made a solitude wherever he appeared, men ran from him as from an incarnation of pestilence; and between him and free intercourse with his countrymen, from the hour of his dishonour in the field, to the hour of his death, there flowed a river of separation—­there were stretched lines of interdict heavier than ever Pope ordained—­there brooded a schism like that of death, a silence like that of the grave; making known for ever the deep damnation of the infamy, which on this earth settles upon the troubled resting-place of him, who, through cowardice, has shrunk away from his duty, and, on the day of trial, has broken the bond which bound him to his country.

Surely there needed no arrear of sorrow to consummate this disaster.  Yet two aggravations there were, which afterwards transpired, irritating the British soldiers to madness.  One was soon reported, viz. that 120 sick or wounded men, lying in an hospital, had been massacred without a motive, by the children of hell with whom we were contending.  The other was not discovered until 1815.  Then first it became known, that in the whole stores of the Kandyan government, (a fortiori then in the particular section of the Kandyan forces which we faced,) there had not been more gunpowder remaining at the hour of Major Davie’s infamous capitulation than 750 lbs. avoirdupois; other munitions of war having been in the same state of bankruptcy.  Five minutes more of resistance, one inspiration of English pluck, would have placed the Kandyan army in our power—­would have saved the honour of the country—­would have redeemed our noble soldiers—­and to Major Davie, would have made the total difference between lying in a traitor’s grave, and lying in Westminster Abbey.