Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/65

 adjutancy of the 45th foot in 1778, and was afterwards quartermaster of that regiment. Ralph, who was born in 1775, is said to have been at one time employed in the customhouse in the island of Grenada. He was appointed ensign in the 45th foot on 15 May 1793, and joined the regiment in August. He was employed with it in suppressing the insurrection in Grenada, when the negroes, led by the brigand chief Fédor, murdered Governor Home and forty of the chief whites. He became lieutenant 2 Sept. 1795, and in January following was transferred to the 15th foot at Martinique as adjutant, and in August 1796 was appointed by Sir Ralph Abercromby military secretary. He remained in that capacity with General Graham, commanding in the island; obtained a company (27th Inniskillings) in September 1796; and in 1797 volunteered with the expedition against Trinidad. After serving as military secretary to General Morshead and General Cuyler, commanding in the West Indies, Darling returned home with the latter officer, and was appointed his aide-de-camp when in command at Brighton. In January 1799 Darling went back to the West Indies as military secretary to Lieutenant-general Sir Thomas Trigge, which appointment he retained until he returned home in 1802, having in the meantime taken part in the capture of Surinam in 1799, and of the Danish and Swedish West India islands in 1801. On 2 Feb. 1800 he had obtained a majority in General Oliver Nicholls's late regiment (the old 4th West India), and on 17 July 1801 became lieutenant-colonel in the 69th foot. In July 1803 he was made assistant quartermaster-general in the home district. In 1805 he accompanied the 69th to India, but returned the year after, and was transferred to the 51st foot, and was appointed principal assistant adjutant-general at the Horse Guards. He vacated his staff appointment in 1808, when the 51st was ordered to Spain, and commanded the regiment when it joined Sir John Moore's army at Lugo, and in the retreat to and battle of Corunna (gold medal). He was a deputy adjutant-general in the Walcheren expedition; after which he resumed his post at the Horse Guards, which he held up to 1814, when he was made deputy adjutant-general. He became brevet-colonel in 1810, and major-general in 1813. In 1815, when still on the Horse Guards staff, he appears to have written to the Duke of Wellington, asking for a command in the army in Belgium—an extraordinary proceeding, which drew a highly characteristic reply from the duke (see, Wellington Despatches, viii. 53–4). He commanded the troops in Mauritius from 1818 to 1823, during eighteen months of which period he administered the government there, and appears to have been unpopular, by reason of his alleged arbitrary character, and also his instructions to enforce the suppression of the slave traffic with the African east coast, as the island had become a British possession. In May 1825 he became a lieutenant-general, and in August was appointed governor of New South Wales, and general commanding the troops in that colony and Van Diemen's Land, in succession to Sir Thomas Brisbane [q. v.] He arrived at Sydney on 18 Dec. 1825. His instructions on appointment will be found in ‘Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers,’ 1831, xxxvi. 339. He was very coldly received. He is described as having been a rigid disciplinarian, painfully precise and methodical in business, with the sort of diligence that is exacting in trifles and prone to overlook wider issues, and practising a stern, exclusive reserve, which brought sycophants about him, of whose misdeeds he received the blame. Before he had been quite two years in the colony a pointed insult offered to him at a Turf Club dinner had caused him to withdraw his patronage from that popular institution, and from the beginning he was involved in an undignified contest with the local press, which all through his tenure of government he sought to silence by repressive measures, without much success. The difficulties of government in a dependency so remote as New South Wales then was, just emerging from its original status of a penal settlement, and split into factions between the emancipated population and the immigrants whom wool-growing was attracting to its shores, were many; but Darling's acts, or the acts of those by whom he was surrounded, provoked criticism. The notorious ‘Sudds and Thompson’ episode was an instance in point. In 1826 Sudds and Thompson, two privates in the 57th foot, then stationed in New South Wales preparatory to going to India, openly committed a larceny in Sydney, to get themselves ‘transported,’ and so obtain their discharges. In view of the prevalence of this form of crime among the troops, Darling issued a general order (see Parl. Papers, Accounts and Papers, 1828, xxi. 691), transmuting the seven years' transportation awarded them to seven years' hard labour on the roads, after which the culprits were to rejoin their corps. The order was to be read, and the men ironed and handed over to one of the road-gangs on a general parade of the troops. The irons consisted of an iron collar or yoke, with wrist and leg manacles attached, and it is said there was precedent for their use. Five days after the parade Sudds died of fever. A belief