THE LIFE OF SIR HOWARD DOUGLAS.*
OF the illustrious many who fought or governed under the British flag during the long series of years antecedent to 1815, when the normal condition of the British empire was war and disturbance, and who laid, amidst world-wide bloodshed and destruction, the foundations of that mighty moral influence of which English- men boast that, if not always fully exerted on the side of freedom and right, it never, at least, subserves that of in- justice or oppression, there are few whose lives present so varied a range of interest as that of Sir Howard Douglas. And this arises not merely from the fact that during active service, extending over a period considerably longer than the average life of man, he served his country with advantage to it and credit to himself, or from any one individual stroke of policy, or deed of personal daring amongst the many which marked his career. Not merely, either, because he was a man in whom daring was a mere habit, who united great organizing capacity ae an almost inexplicable personal influence over all with whom he came in contact, whose versatility of application was only surpassed by his intensity of purpose, and who thus attained distinction in the most widely differing branches of service, does the life of Sir Howard Douglas claim peculiar attention. Beyond all his contemporaries he must be regarded as essentially a connecting link between the past and present, between the brute force of the warfare of our ancestors, and the scientific mechanical appliances of to-day. Gaining his first laurels on land and sea, at a period of which every tradition, military or naval, is obsolete, he invariably adapted himself to, or rather foresaw and prepared for, the sweeping changes which daring his lifetime revolutionized every feature of the art of war, and which fossilized so many a gallant veteran of the last generation, bewildered by the rapidly shifting landmarks of his professional world.
Howard Douglas, born in 1776, was the son of Admiral Sir Charles Douglas, a scion of the true Douglas stock, whd nobly
The Life of Sir 'toward Douglas, Bart., G.C.B., D.C.L. By S. W.
Follom. Loudon: Thum. 1862.
won his baronetcy by running his frigate through the ice Bay of St. Lawrence—a work of nine days' constant peril- ing the siege of Quebec, and organizing a flotilla, which clealeo Lake Champlain of the enemy, and who was otherwise known as a dating and efficient officer. The principal feature of Howard's boyhood was his intense longing for the life of a sailor, and the experience he acquired during the days and days he spent on board Leith fishing-smacks stood him in good stead more than once in after life. On the death of his father, however, lie found himself compelled to abandon all prospect of a naval career and to. enter the Royal Artillery. That he gave way to no useless repining may be gathered from the fact that, though rejected at first for ignorance of the Rule of Three, within nine weeks he had not only passed the requisite examination, but was actually first in the mathematical class at the Woolwich Academy. A boy of seventeen, lie found himself in charge of the artillery at Tyne- month Castle, and a striking manifestation of his characteristic capacity was not long in presenting itself. The force of artillery throughout the Northern district was far too weak for efficiency, and a scheme, suggested and carried out by Lieutenant Douglas, for drilling as gunners thirty men from each regiment in the district obtained immediate recognition for his services. We cannot pass over, either, the characteristic and amusing anecdote in which one first traces signs of that mechanical genius which afterwards was so strongly developed. Annoyed at night in his bedroom by rats, which he had no apparent possibility of catching, he contrived an elaborate system of slides, pulleys, and strings, by which, when the rats had in- vaded his MOM in full force and fancied security, he closed all their means of egress at one touch, and quietly picked them off one by one with a pistol. This was fine sport for Sir Howard, but Mr. Fullom wisely omits to allude to the light in which it was viewed by the other occupants of the house. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed to the command of a detachment of troops for Canada, and in 1795 he sailed on board the Phyllis transport, destined to become a total wreck on the coast of an uninhabited rocky island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After months of the wildest adventures, which read like the story of an Arctic Robinson Crusoe, he brought the survivors of his de- tachment to Quebec. During his two years' stay in Canada, the conduct of a perilous mission among the Cherokees, and the fitting up and commind of an armed schooner, were amongst his services, while fishing and hunting with the Indians, and such feats as skating from Quebec to Montreal, in order to be present at a ball, formed his amusements. After a rough voyage home in a ricketty merchant brig, of which he took the command out of mere love of seamanship, be soon attained a reputation for scientific gunnery in command of the Mortar Brigade. He then succeeded to the management of the Military College at Wycombe, where not only in military instruction, but in the more delicate task of the management of youth, he proved alike successful. After good service at Corunna and at Walcheren, during which the death of his half-brother raised him to the baronetcy, be proceeded in 1811 to Spain, in the capacity of con- fidential agent of the British Government with the Spanish army under General Abadia, in Galicia, and organizer of the Spanish guerillas. To his services in these and other capacities daring the remainder of the Peninsular War, Mr. Full= judiciously devotes the greater portion of his volume. It is impossible within our limits to give even an idea of the overwhelming difficulties of his position in conducting our military relations with Spain, the prejudices, ignorance, and inertness of the authorities which he had to overcome, and the success which ultimately crowned his mission. His characteristic power of reconciling the most bigoted martinets and the most effete administrators to novel organization, bore him through this long and arduous task. It was not often that Sir Howard was concerned in matters of purely strategic detail, so that his advice as to the siege of Burgos, rejected by the great Duke at the time, but afterwards acknowledged by him in the words, "Douglas was right ; he was the only man who told me the truth," is of special interest. After his return to England, Sir Howard successively held appointments by means of which the entire range of military education, both home and Indian, passed under his control, and, as a natural consequence, received more or less the impress of his personal administration. During this period of his career, too, he devoted himself to the thorough investigation of what had always seemed to him a vital question for our navy—the gunnery department, then utterly neglected, and his scientific researches and schemes for gunnery drill were embodied in the celebrated " Treatise on Gunnery." Considerations then forced by
hinia an unwilling A dmiralsy have since resulted in Whitworth guns and the "Excellent.' His work on fortifications soon followed, and—it is curious to note how his early love for the sea never left him—his studies in scientific navigation led to his invention of several nautical instruments, in consequence of which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1824, another new and still more important era of his life commenced. Throwing aside for the time all scientific research, he accepted the governor- ship of New Brunswick, and without delay threw himself imito the practical tasks of vi-iiting the most remote portions of the colony, laying out road:, raising, public buildings, founding agricultural societies, introducing new stock and implements, building light- houses, establishing schools, and, finally, founding the University of New Brunswick. As usual, the elements seemed in league against Sir Howard, and the fearful fire of Fredericton, which spread over six thousand stplare miles, and reduced so large a portion of the colony to utter waste, served to bring out his ex- traordinary. coolness in a new and appalling form of danger, besides his energetic measures for relief. His repulse of an irruption of American filibusters in 1826, and certain boundary disputes, led him to devote, his most earnest atten- tion to the political ftiture of the United States, and in a report presented by hint to the Colonial Secretary, in 1828, his power of taking a comprehensive view of present events with regard to their ultimate bearings, which men vaguely term fore- sight, is most strikingly exhibited. Not only does he distinctly predict a disruption of the Union, but he deduces this conclusion from the increasing desire of the Northern States to create a monopoly for Northern manufactures and a forced market for their sale, the that ough identification of the interests of the South with the maintenance of slavery, and, above all, the increasing influence of the State element in the Constitution at the expense of the Federal. Viewed in the light of present events, this is, as Mr. Fullom observes, one of the most remark- able state papers on record. In 1835 he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands; and notwithstanding constant differences with the Home Government, as well as the inevitable difficulties with the turbulent race which forms the population, he introduced reforms in every department, defeated an attempted Papal aggression, defied the whole influence of the Greek Patriarch, promoted education, established an entire legal code, and ultimately, on his recall for political reasons by the Home Government, received the tribute of a public monument and a vote of thanks from the Senate. Here, as elsewhere, strange convulsions of nature seemed to attend him, and the earthquake of Zante, in which hourly shocks extended over an entire fort- night, was mitigated in its effects by the unceasing labours of Sir Howard, cool, active, and administrative as ever.
On his return to England, Sir Howard was elected for Liver- pool in the Tory-Protectionist interest. Constant attention to naval and military questions and devotion to local interests marked his career in Parliament ; and, on his retirement, in 1847, at the age of 72, his active career in life may be said to have ended. His violent opposition to the employment of iron-clad vessels, too generally set down at the time as merely the prejudice of an old man, was simply the result of a consistent belief in the scientific development of artillery to an extent which would render iron-Clads as defenceless as, and infinitely more cumbersome than wooden ships. Whether Whitworth guns and the attack on Charleston decide the question is, perhaps, doubtful ; that they prove Sir Howard, even in his eighty-sixth year, to have been no mere blind opponent of change, is certain. Still, however, this and other controversies in which he came in contact with public opinion, then under the influence of the prejudice against veterans rising out of the Cri- mean war, disturbed painfully the peace of his last days. The death of a beloved daughter gave the final shock to his enfeebled frame, and in November, 1861, he died the quiet and painless death of old fige.
Such was the lengthened public career which Mr. Fullom has ably sketched in the volume before us. Sir Howard's priv'ate character, upon which Mr. Fullom dwells with affectionate respect, may, perhaps, be best described by saying that he bore worthily the beautiful Douglas motto, "Tender and true." There is no one of our great houses which has acquired, in the lapse of generations, so definite a traditionary individuality as that attaching to "the Douglas " of legend and romance. There are few, we think, who can fail to be struck by finding this well known character of tradition reproduced so completely in the biography of Sir Howard Douglas.
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