'Isopel Berners.'

* * * * *

Soldiers and sailors promoted to command are said to be in general
tyrants; in nine cases out of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been
obliged to have recourse to extreme severity in order to protect
themselves from the insolence and mutinous spirit of the men,--'He is no
better than ourselves: shoot him, bayonet him, or fling him overboard!'
they say of some obnoxious individual raised above them by his merit.
Soldiers and sailors in general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a
lordly sot, or the son of a man who has 'plenty of brass'--their own
term--but will mutiny against the just orders of a skilful and brave
officer who 'is no better than themselves.' There was the affair of the
Bounty, for example: Bligh was one of the best seamen that ever trod
deck, and one of the bravest of men; proofs of his seamanship he gave by
steering, amidst dreadful weather, a deeply laden boat for nearly four
thousand miles over an almost unknown ocean--of his bravery, at the fight
of Copenhagen, one of the most desperate ever fought, of which after
Nelson he was the hero: he was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew
of the Bounty mutinied against him, and set him half naked in an open
boat, with certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away
with the ship. Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether
true or groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was 'no better than
themselves'; he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate, nor
possessed of twenty thousand pounds.

* * * * *

There they come, the bruisers, from far London, or from wherever else