counsel had also given him insight into the whole legal proceedings of this court-martial, which betrayed to his practised eye a palpable infraction of one at least of those essential rules by which every tribunal of justice ought to be governed, or cease to be considered a tribunal of justice. He knew all this, and the truth _burnt within him_; he could not sit down in silence; he could not at once dismiss his sympathy and indignation—his sympathy for an injured man, his indignation for the rules of justice violated. He had ceased to be the advocate of Captain Douglas, but he still clung to his cause, for it was the cause, he was persuaded, of truth and justice. “Only a great and pressing exigency,” he thus explains himself in the eloquent exordium of his letter, “could have induced one of the humblest of your Majesty’s subjects to step forth from his obscurity, and thus publicly and directly address your Majesty. Even had he not known, however, the benignant and equitable temper of his sovereign, a case like the present would have forced him to bring it forward; for the voice of justice is a sublime one, strengthening the feeblest, and elevating the humblest, who, hearing, endeavours to obey it. “He who has thus ventured to beseech the ear of his sovereign, believes in his conscience that the cause of justice in this country has recently sustained, through a defective system of military jurisprudence, a calamitous defeat. “An officer, an accomplished gentleman, of ancient and honourable family, in the very flower of his age,[2] after having devoted thirteen years to the faithful and zealous service of your Majesty in almost every quarter of your world-wide dominions, has been ignominiously expelled from that service, branded as a Liar. He stood on trial before his brother officers with as high vouchers to character, as could have been presented, had it unfortunately been rendered necessary by such a casualty as has befallen him, by any one of themselves. He was, moreover, the eldest son of a general officer who lately descended to his grave with honour, after half a century spent in the service of three of your Majesty’s predecessors; leaving behind him, as his eldest son, the unhappy gentleman to whose case I earnestly implore the attention of your Majesty....