So much for _confidential_ reports. Who can count the number of high-spirited noble and gallant youths who have fallen victims, or whose prospects have been blasted through this dastardly mode of proceeding? It is the noble-minded and high-spirited alone who call for protection against such an iniquitous system; the fawning and servile are sure to escape, and not unfrequently with rewards. The duties of a commanding officer are manifold; and he who does not execute them with temperance, justice and impartiality is not for that responsible post.
[Sidenote: GENERAL ROSS AND SIR E. BLAKENEY.]
I had the good fortune of being intimately acquainted with that gallant and sterling soldier, General Ross, who should be held up as a model for commanding officers of regiments. He at once was the father and brother of every officer in his corps, and was on the most familiar and intimate terms with every officer down to the junior ensign; yet none ever dared or attempted to take the slightest liberty which could be considered, even by the severest martinet, as derogatory in the slightest degree to the respect due to the commanding officer or injurious to the maintenance of the strictest discipline. The respect entertained by all for Colonel Ross was entirely matter of sentiment and good feeling. The lively, though sometimes imprudent sallies of a glowing mind were by him rather laughed away than harshly or even seriously chided; the feelings of a gentleman were never wounded in cooling the fervid ebullitions of youth. He felt fully sensible that the military laws, as sanctioned by his country, were sufficient for the ends desired, and therefore never resorted to the cowardly subterfuge of stabbing in the dark by means of clandestine reports, which are never resorted to except by those who from meanness of capacity or want of resolution shudder at a fearless and open discharge of their duty, or whose vicious and vindictive natures induce them to strike the deadly blow unseen. Such a liberal and just commanding officer did exist, I know, in the person of the late General Ross when commanding the 20th Regiment; and such a commanding officer does exist, I have been told, in the person of Sir Edward Blakeney, commanding the Royal Fusiliers.