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
Page 47
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
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.)
Under these circumstances – thought I, as I walked up the hill, on
which I accidentally encountered my official friend – under these
circumstances of the men having successfully opposed themselves to
the Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which
the sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda
Department will have been particularly careful of the national
honour. It will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good
faith, not to say the generosity, of its dealing with them, that
great national authorities can have no small retaliations and
revenges. It will have made every provision for their health on
the passage home, and will have landed them, restored from their
campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound food, and
good medicines. And I pleased myself with dwelling beforehand, on
the great accounts of their personal treatment which these men
would carry into their various towns and villages, and on the
increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly follow.
I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-failing deserters on
my railroad would by-and-by become a phenomenon.
In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of
Liverpool. – For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had
brought the soldiers in question to THAT abode of Glory.
Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they
had made their triumphant entry there? They had been brought
through the rain in carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the
gate, and had then been carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers.
Their groans and pains during the performance of this glorious
pageant, had been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes
of spectators but too well accustomed to scenes of suffering. The
men were so dreadfully cold, that those who could get near the
fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in among
the blazing coals. They were so horribly reduced, that they were