Note 33 — CHAP. XXVI. A NAVAL STUDY—(continued).

My third son is a post-captain, and my youngest a commander in the navy, both having won their rank by services in action. With regard to my eldest son, Lord Cochrane, the public shall judge of the favour shown to him on my account. He was originally placed in the navy, in which he served four years, but was driven from the service by the animosity excited by the imputations against his father. After this he entered the army, in which he served eighteen years. He was engaged throughout the Canadian rebellion, and subsequently for eight consecutive years in the pestilential climate of China during the war. He there served under Lord Clyde, acted as aide-de-camp to Major-General D’Aguilar, and subsequently as Quartermaster-General. His health having at length broken down under the arduous nature of his duties—he having been, as I have reason to believe, the only officer who remained for so long a period on a station proverbially unhealthy—he was ordered home on sick leave, and had to undergo the unusual mortification of being periodically, and that too at short intervals, ordered to appear before the Medical Board in London. This was actual persecution, nor did it cease till Major-General D’Aguilar himself went to the Horse Guards and remonstrated against such conduct being pursued towards an officer whom he had sent home as being worn out by eight consecutive years’ hard duty. On my son’s asking for an unattached majority by purchase, he was told that his length of service, from 1833 to 1851, was insufficient, notwithstanding that he gave the precedent of earlier promotion in the case of an officer who had married the daughter of the Master-General of the Ordnance, and who got his majority in eleven years. Finding no prospect of promotion, my son sold out, quitting the army as a captain, as the state of his health did not warrant him in returning to his regiment. I adduce this as a specimen of the kind of reward bestowed on me or my family.