Ah! little did I expect at the time I
wrote that account, that the motives of delicacy, which then impelled
me to withhold the name, would so soon be exchanged for the higher
duty which now justifies me in adding it! At the thought of such
events the language of a tender superstition is the voice of nature
itself, and those facts alone presenting themselves to our memory
which had left an impression on our hearts, we assent to, and adopt
the poet's pathetic complaint:-
O sir! the good die first,
And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.
WORDSWORTH.
Thus the humane plan described in the pages now referred to, that a
system in pursuance of which the captain of a man-of-war uniformly
regarded his sentences not as dependent on his own will, or to be
affected by the state of his feelings at the moment, but as the pre-
established determinations of known laws, and himself as the voice of
the law in pronouncing the sentence, and its delegate in enforcing
the execution, could not but furnish occasional food to the spirit of
detraction, must be evident to every reflecting mind.
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