Now if I had injured Mr Morrison, (instead of his having, as was the fact, attempted to injure me) what more could I possibly have done to shew my willingness to afford him an explanation? Mr Morrison had then before him two distinct offers from me, either of which would have been satisfactory to any man who did not dread an investigation of his conduct. The next letter which he wrote to me will shew whether he dared to meet that investigation. It was as follows: « Sir, "Norman Crofs Barracks, 4th July, 1810." " I should have answered your last letter sooner had I known your address, and therefore have to say, that as you appear, or wish not to appear to understand the purport of mine to you, I fhall take the liberty of explaining it to you. In your defence to the charges preferred against you by Major Hedley, you have thought proper (merely because I was placed in the painful fituation of a witness, whose evidence you found irksome, from your knowledge of its being founded on fact) to make affertions and infinuations the most grofs and unfounded, as unbecoming a man of honor to make, as they are deftitute of truth; and, not content with stopping here, you have proceeded to make the following charges against me: First, That I did lay a settled plan to entrap you, "Second, And did not only unneceffarily increase my balance, "Third, But, instead of coming or fending, did "Fourth, Studiously keep out of your way; and Fifth, Did abfent myself from my party; and "Sixth, Did take measures to prevent that party being paid; "Seventh, And all this for the purpose of subjecting you to a serious military crime." "To substantiate these charges you have not adduced a fingle tittle of proof; and, could I suppose you that man of honor I have ever wifhed to do, might appeal to your own confcience, much more to your own words, for the injuftice of them. You diftinctly fay to the court, that on the 25th August, you had my account, stating I was 51. 175. 9d. in advance to the party; you acknowledge the receipt of my letter on the 29th Auguft; you again admit my personally meeting you at Newcastle, on the 6th September, and again on the next day; and you admit the receipt of my letter of the 9th September, and at the same time you confess you were in poffeffion of the public money for this very purpose, on the 29th Auguft; on this I fhall make no comment. I have already stated the charges are unwarranted by facts and untrue, and I now call upon you, as a man of honor, to substantiate or retract them. In your first letter you refer me to your friends in the regiment. In reply, I have to observe, that the charges are preferred by you, and it is for you to prove them; 1 but, having named your friends, I infert an extract from a letter I received from a military man, whofe impartiality, information, and integrity, 1 don't imagine you would be difpofed to doubt. It is as follows: 'I have no hesitation in giving you my opinion upon the subject in question. So far from your having laid a fettled plan to entrap Captain Dale, the impreffion your evidence made upon my mind was directly contrary, nor can I fee any thing upon the different charges that will bear fuch conftruc tions as are made by Captain Dale. From the view I have of your testimony, I must say it bore not a feature of malice, nor were you forward in giving it, or anxious to infinuate.' These are the fentiments of an unbiaffed individual; if others were neceffary, I can produce them. I can only add, that you have thought proper publicly to prefer these charges against me. I affert them to be moft grossly falfe, and unmerited by my conduct to you, and I now call upon you to explain them. "I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, "P. S. At the time I was in advance to the party, even allowing your own statement from the 19th August to the 19th September, when you date your letter, exclufive of this you know I was Serjeant Walton's money out of pocket, and at the fame time you withheld my marching allowance, yet did my anfwers to any question which did not require me to speak to matter of fact bear malice. Where was the malice of the following anfwers? Were you inconvenienced by the want of money? Anfwer. No; I was not. Had you drawn fooner, would your bill have been honored? Answer. I have no doubt of it. It is necessary here to observe that, on the 25th June, when Mr Morrison's correspondence with me commenced, I was under orders to go into the North on the recruiting service, with the other officers, (Mr Morrison excepted) who had been under my command on the same service, when the charges upon which I was tried were preferred against me; and, in obedience to such orders, I did set off for the North the next morning. Mr Morrison's letter of the 4th July was received by me at Cleadon, but as it was erroneously directed to Cleadon, near North Shields, instead of Cleadon near South Shields, it did not reach me in the usual course of post, and I had not had it in my possession more than two or three days, when I received another letter from Mr Morrison, dated the 10th July, which was merely a copy of his letter of the 4th July, with the following addition: "The above is a copy of a letter I sent you on the day of its date, having put it into the post-office at Stilton myself, but in case it may have miscarried (which from your filence I suspect it has) I am induced to refend it, having taken a receipt for it from the post-master here. Now Sir, if you really poffefs that unblemished character, that high sense of honor, probity, and integrity, you have recently fo publicly laid claim tò, you cannot hesitate a moment as to the line of conduct you ought to adopt on this occafion; but, if on the contrary you mean to found your pre tenfions to this character, by basely endeavouring to destroy that of others, by making charges which are GROSSLY FALSE, and deftitute of the smallest foundation in truth, I have only to add, that I shall not fail to make this matter as public as poffible. “You have preferred charges against me which I assert to be grossly and scandalously false, and which you know are devoid of the smallefs particle of truth. You hold his Majefty's commiffion, as an officer and a gentleman; under these characters, I call upon you to substantiate the above charges. "I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, It is proper to remind the reader, (lest the length of these two epistles should have caused him to forget the circumstance) that these letters of the 4th and 10th July were the replies which Mr Morrison thought proper to send to my second letter of the 25th June, offering to refer the dispute between Mr Morrison and myself to the Colonel of the regiment. The drift of Mr Morrison, in writing these letters, must be obvious to every one. It evidently was to insult me so grossly as to render any explanation on my part impossible, while by the ingenious device of interweaving with these insulting letters, his own statement of the case, he reserved to himself the power of publishing that statement, unanswered by me, under the specious form of correspondence between Captain Dale and Lieutenant Morrison. With respect to myself, I think it will be admitted by every one, that I had only one way left of disposing of this correspondence, and that was by sending the whole of it to my commanding officer. I did this on the 14th July, and I informed Mr Morrison that I had done so, by a short note, of which the following is a copy: « Sir, • Cleadon, 14th July, 1810.” "In answer to yours of the 4th and 10th of this month, I have only to observe that, as you are not satisfied with my last letter, I have, in compliance with what I then expressed, forwarded THE WHOLE of your correspondence on the subject, to Lord Lovaine, the commanding officer of the Northumberland Regiment. " EDWARD DALE, Captain Northumb. Regiment." Lord Lovaine thought proper, without any further interference on my part, to order me to prosecute Mr Morrison for writing the letters in question, and the result of that prosecution has been already stated. I have now done with the first proposition which I proposed to establish, but there are one or two other parts of the anonymous Address to the Army, which I must beg leave to notice, though they do not concern myself personally. I shall first advert to a trick which Mr Morrison has attempted to play off upon the public, but so very shallow a trick that little more than a simple comparison of dates is required for its detection. He has attempted to shew that he did not evade my offer of appealing to Lord Lovaine, but that on the contrary he did himself appeal to his Lordship, and that his appeal was disregarded. To prove this fact, he has published a letter addressed by him to Lord Lovaine, in which he solicited his lordship to give him an opportunity to clear his character. Now it requires but a very short explanation to shew that this letter, so far from being a serious appeal to his colonel, was no other than a most insolent mockery of that officer. My letter to Mr Morrison, offering to refer the matter to Lord Lovaine, was dated the 25th June, 1810. Instead of agreeing to this offer, Mr Morrison chose to send me the insulting letters for writing which he was afterwards broke, and which are dated on the 4th and 10th July. In these letters Mr Morrison did not even condescend to notice my offer to appeal to the colonel, and I transmitted the whole correspondence officially to Lord Lovaine, on the 14th July, in consequence of which his lordship, as has been stated, ordered me to bring Mr Morrison to a court martial. It was not until long after Mr Morrison had thus wantonly repeated his insults to me, and treated his commanding officer with marked contempt, and after he knew, by my letter of the 14th July, that Lord Lovaine was acquainted with these circumstances by having had the whole correspondence officially transmitted to him, that with equal duplicity and effrontery he made the sham appeal to Lord Lovaine, which he has had the folly to publish, and in which, he, with great coolness, told his lordship, that "he had been anxiously waiting for his determina tion." This letter is actually dated on the 27th July. Mr Morrison cannot get over this; no shuffling, no equivocation, can alter dates. There is only one other document published in the Address to the Army which remains to be noticed, and that is a letter dated the 16th August, 1810, (after I had been ordered to bring Mr Morrison to trial) and which he says he addressed to the officers of the Northumberland Regiment with a copy of the correspondence inclosed. Mr Morrison certainly did send a letter to the officers on or about the 16th August, and as he has thought proper to print the letter, he ought in justice to them, to have published the answer which they returned to it. As he has not done this, I shall do so. The following is a copy of it: « Sir, "Norman Cross Barracks, 16th August, 1810.” "The inclosed correfpondence is returned unread.-The offi cers of the mess are unanimously of opinion that it does not come under their cognizance, as it has already been laid before Colonel Lord Lovaine. (Signed) "Lieutenant Morrison." "ROBERT OGLE, Captain and Prefident." I shall now proceed, (as I before proposed) to shew, that "Mr Morrison's conduct was such as fully to warrant the remarks that I made upon it." To establish this point, it is unnecessary to do much more than to refer to my defence, and the evidence given upon the trial; this indeed would have been amply sufficient, had not some further explanation been rendered necessary, partly by the circumstance of some material evidence, not alluded to in my defence, having been obtained from my witnesses, who, it is almost unnecessary to inform the reader, could not be examined until after my defence was read, and partly by the misrepresentations contained in the Prosecutor's reply* and in Mr Morrison's correspondence. *To expofe the whole of the misrepresentations contained in the Profecutor's reply, it would be neceffary to notice almost every fentence contained in it. The most material parts however are investigated in this address, and the reader will find that fuch of the Profecutor's statements as I have left unnoticed are either contradicted or wholly unsupported by the evidence. There is, however, one of those statements which, upon recollection, I think it may not be improper to notice here; it will ferve as a specimen of the want of candour which pervades the whole of them. After making a variety of obfervations refpecting the general balances of my account (which by the way had nothing to do with the charges before the court,) to prove the abfurdity of which obfervations it was only neceffary to compare my drafts with the correfponding eftimates, the Profecutor, (fee reply, page 76,) goes on to state as follows. "However as Cockburn has faid that, from the 20th August, to the 19th September, Captain Dale advanced 2311, I beg leave |