The Great Tasmania's Cargo
I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has a terminus in London. It
is the railway for a large military depot, and for other large barracks. To the best of my
serious belief, I have never been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some
handcuffed deserters in the train.
It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English army should have many
bad and troublesome characters in it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being
made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour. Such men are
assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the
compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness. Accordingly, when any such
Circumlocutional embellishments of the soldier's condition have of late been brought to
notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax,
have considered the matter as being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare
that we would rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without violence
to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in authority over us.
Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier's letter published in the
newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that in the ranks of
the army, there exists under all disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in
any station on earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the soldier
does his, this world would be a better place? There may be greater difficulties in our way
than in the soldier's. Not disputed. But, let us at least do our duty towards HIM.
I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had looked after Mercantile
Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on a wild March morning. My conversation with
my official friend Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied, took this direction
as we took the up-hill direction, because the object of my uncommercial journey was to
see some discharged soldiers who had recently come home from India. There were men
of HAVELOCK's among them; there were men who had been in many of the great
battles of the great Indian campaign, among them; and I was curious to note what our
discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done with.
I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend Pangloss) because these
men had claimed to be discharged, when their right to be discharged was not admitted.
They had behaved with unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circumstances
had arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and entitled them to
enter on a new one. Their demand had been blunderingly resisted by the authorities in
India: but, it is to be presumed that the men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle
had ended in their being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home. (There
was an immense waste of money, of course.)
