is more, we suspect, than the ration of the French soldier or seaman when on service.

With regard to the number of prisoners put on board each ship, the general regulation was, not to exceed that which the same ship would have had, as her established complement of men, if in commission. Thus a 74-gun ship had on board from 600 to 700 men; and when it is considered that all the guns, masts, pumps, anchors, cables, and every kind of lumber, were removed out of the ship, it may fairly be concluded that, without the necessity of exposing themselves to bad weather, they had just twice the space to move about in, that our seamen have, with hard labour, and salt provisions. We have now before us a return of the prisoners of war, on board the ships in Portsmouth harbour, in September, 1813, when most numerous, and the state of health at that time, which we think will furnish a satisfactory reply to the alleged misery and mortality on board the hulks as set forth by M. Dupin.

Making the proportion of sick in 9227 men, equal to just 13 in the hundred. And though it was perfectly natural that men, confined as they necessarily were, should lament their hard fate, and sigh after liberty, yet we are well assured that, on the whole, their conduct was praiseworthy; that they had seldom any complaints to make; that they amused themselves in playing at cards, or billiards; in reading, writing and drawing; or in the manufacture of ships, chessmen, and other articles, of bone, hair, &c. for sale. This is admitted by M. Dupin-but here again the cloven foot protrudes

itself.

itself. By a restriction which well describes the mercantile jea lousy of a manufacturing people, the prisoners were prohibited from making for sale, woollen gloves and straw hats it would have injured, in these petty branches, the commerce of the subjects of His Britannic Majesty!' It was even so; these petty branches of manufacture were the employ of the wives and children of the neighbouring cottagers, and enabled them to pay their rent and taxes; and on a representation of the magistrates that the vast quantities sent into the market by the French prisoners, who had neither rent, nor taxes, nor lodging, firing, food or clothing to find, had thrown the industrious cottagers out of work, an order was very properly given to put a stop to the manufacture of these two articles by the prisoners.

At the time the above Return was made, there were in Forton prison, near Portsmouth, 3972 prisoners, of whom 174 were sick, being at the rate of about 4 in the hundred. The good state of health was still more extraordinary in the prison built on the heights of Dartmoor. In consequence of an attack made on government in the House of Commons, for sending prisoners of war to this 'cold, damp and unhealthy spot,' as it was called, the Transport Board, in 1811, ordered one of its members personally to inspect the prison. At the time of his arrival, the number of prisoners amounted to 6572, of whom 36 only were in the sick-list, and one only had died. M. Dupin, indeed, while labouring to describe the hulks and the prisons as the most horrible dens of misery, in which 'human victims were buried, and slowly devoted to the infernal gods of hatred, of vengeance and of death,'-even he is compelled to admit, that'the numbers which died were much less considerable than might have been expected from the ill-treatment they experienced: he accounts for this, however, by a discovery that the effect of confinement is not to afflict man with sudden and violent maladies, which terminate existence rapidly; and that this effect was so well known to the British government, that it took the remarkable step of diminishing the number of deaths among its prisoners, by sending them to France to die; where he asserts that " more than nine-tenths of them did actually die in the hospitals.' We should be the less surprized at this result, if it be true, as it has been stated on French official authority, that one third part of the whole population of Paris dies in its hospitals. This, indeed, is in some degree confirmed by a statement of M. Dupin on another occasion,-that, on a proportion of 100,000 individuals, employed (in time of peace) in the French navy, 75,000 are annually sent to the hospital.-(Tom. II. p. 260.) But we shall show how very little credit is to be placed in M. Dupin's numbers,

numbers, which appear to us to be set down at random. He says that, from 1803 to 1814 inclusive,

The number who died in the English prisons was
Sent to France in a dying state during that period

12,845
12,787

Total 25,632

Returned to France since 1814, their health more
or less debilitated

70,041

Grand Total 95,673

Now the actual numbers in the above-mentioned period were as under:

-

Sent home as invalided, on parole

17,607

122,440

And the total number of prisoners brought to this country during the war was So that it would follow, on taking the whole of the eleven years, that the average number of deaths amounted only to 940 annually; but as the great mass of prisoners were thrown upon us in the years 1808 and 9, we will take the average number at 70,000 only, and the number of years at six, which will give 1740 for the annual deaths, or two and a half per cent. on the whole number, which is in fact much greater than was actually the case. Be it observed also, that, after the several great battles that were fought, many of the 122,440 prisoners were received in a state of disease, and others severely wounded. What, then, shall we think of the man, who wantonly calumniates the government for sending home to their friends many thousands of weak, aged, and convalescent prisoners of war, in spite of the inhuman and obstinate determination of Buonaparte to admit of no exchange; and converts into a charge of inhumanity what was purely intended, and really was, an act of the truest kindness and consideration ?

When M. Dupin was convinced of the great cost of prisonships, compared with that of prisoners on shore, he might have been also convinced that it was not from choice that a preference was given to the former: had England been studded with garrison towns and fortresses like France, the French prisoners would have been confined in them, as the English prisoners were in France; but we are far from being certain that they would have been gainers by the change. M. Dupin will probably be startled to hear, what is nevertheless a positive fact, that it was by no means uncommon for the French prisoners to request a removal from Forton to the ships of war.

6

M. Dupin well knows that it was not any alarm created by the

physical

physical strength of 70,000 French prisoners' which forbade their mixing with the English population: it was the fear of exposing to the eyes of delicacy, the scandalous and abominable practices shamelessly committed in open day, that made it necessary, in many cases, to remove even the parole prisoners from the immediate vicinity of towns. In making a merit of the English prisoners being sent to cheerful towns, and well received among the inhabitants-he should not have forgotten to add that it was the immense sums of money remitted by the friends of the détenus that purchased them a welcome reception, and made the most gloomy of their garrison towns, ' des villes riantes.' Far different was the case of the French prisoners: no human being in France, and least of all Buonaparte, seemed to care a straw about what became of them!

We have only a word more to say to M. Dupin on this subject. The mean and paltry trick of supporting his statements of the ill-treatment of prisoners of war in 1804-1814 on the authority of Howard, who died before the revolution, and whose work on the State of the Prisons' was published so long ago as the year 1777, may answer his purpose in France, but will not add much to his character for candour in England.

We willingly leave M. Dupin to take what notice he may think fit of our strictures on a part of his work so unworthy of him, in the two volumes with which he promises to favour the world, and proceed to the more agreeable task of examining the manner in which he has treated the great subject which comprehends the whole system, regarding both the personnel and matériel, of the naval force of Great Britain. The documents which have served him for this purpose, are the several Reports of the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry, and Naval Revision and Finance, Orders in Council,* Navy Estimates, and other papers laid before Parliament; the Naval Articles of War, the general printed Instructions, &c.; to which we may add, such other information, verbal and written, as his industry and address enabled him to collect; and we must do him the justice to say, that of these materials he has made the most, and that, generally speaking, he is perfect master of his subject.

There are those, we know, who are disposed to think it impolitic to open our dock-yards and arsenals to the inspection of foreigners;

* From one of these, M. Dupin might have given credit to the feeling which actuated the British government towards prisoners of war, by the terms of an Instruction to the Captains of Ships, established by his Majesty's Order in Council, which directs them to take particular care that all prisoners of war are treated with humanity; that their property is carefully protected; that they have their proper allowances of provisions; and that every comfort of air and exercise which circumstances can admit of, is allowed them.'

but

but we think differently; being persuaded that the degree of perfection to which the docks, buildings, machinery, ships, artillery, and all the implements of war, are carried in Great Britain, is well calculated to leave on the minds of the visitors an impression highly favourable to the state of the arts, and the resources of the nation to which they belong. Of this fact, M. Dupin's work affords a strong corroboration; since, with the single exception of the hulks or prison-ships, all our naval institutions, civil and military, practical and theoretical, receive an almost unqualified admiration; and few, we believe, are better qualified for giving a correct opinion on these matters than himself.

As M. Dupin writes solely for the instruction of his countrymen, and thinks it necessary to describe, in its minutest details, the whole system by which the civil and military affairs of the navy of Great Britain are conducted, it may be reasonably supposed that the greater part of his work offers but little that is wholly new or interesting to the English reader. We shall confine our notice, therefore, mostly to those general observations which he makes on the navy, and naval service of Great Britain, as compared with those of France; correcting the trifling mistakes into which he incidentally falls, and which are surprizingly few for a foreigner, on a subject which embraces so vast a variety of matter.

In his notice of the powers vested in the Lord High Admiral and executed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, he observes that there is on record an exception to this hierarchy of the service,' in the person of the late Lord Chatham, the 'despotic Chatham, who commenced the war in 1756 by the greatest act of piracy of which any civilized nation could be guilty.' This Chatham, it seems, being then prime minister, wrote out himself instructions for the fleet, and sent them to be signed by the Lords of the Admiralty, ordering his private secretary to cover the writing with a leaf of blank paper;'*-thus, he continues, 'the natural directors of the English navy remained in entire ignorance of the operation for which they were nevertheless to prepare all the elements.' We ought, perhaps, to hold him the more pardonable for repeating so absurd a story, on recollecting that the late Mr. Whitbread (on the same respectable authority, perhaps) asked, in the House of Commons, if it was not usual for the laylords of the Admiralty, as he was pleased to call them, to sign papers with a blank sheet covering the writing?

In investigating the cause of that vast superiority of the British over the French navy, in all its departments, civil and military,

*He quotes for his authority Vie du Comte de Chatham,' which we suppose to be a translation of the wretched publication of Almon the bookseller-a mere tissue of falsehoods and absurdities, and wholly unworthy of any notice whatever.

M. Dupin