Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/71

 elder fellow travellers. At the age of sixteen his strength and activity were so great, that few men could have stood up against him with any chance of success. On his return to Guernsey, every interest the family possessed was anxiously exerted to indulge his wish of entering the British army, but owing to the great reductions made after the peace of 1815, he was unable to obtain a commission, even by purchase. Those relatives, who could best have forwarded his views, had been slain in the public service, and in that day few claims were admitted, unless supported by strong parliamentary influence. He attended the levee of the commander-in-chief, who promised to take his memorial into early consideration 3 but His Royal Highness had first to satisfy the cravings of an insatiable oligarchy, whose iniquitous misrule has at length succumbed to the desperation of a long-injured people. This was a cruel disappointment to one, whom nature ever intended for a military life, and it ultimately drove him to a distant land to shed that blood, and to yield that breath, which he in vain sought to devote to his native country.* Happy for him and for his friends had it been otherwise, as it will quickly be seen that he was endowed with quali- ties, which must have rendered him conspicuous in any service, but which, in a civil strife, only hastened his destruction. Thus disappointed, he spent two or three years in Catalonia, of which province a relativef

pursuit ! His first cousin, William Le Mesurier Tupper, entered the army in the 23d Royal Welsh Fusileers, in September, 1823, and in August, 1826, was a captain in that distinguished regiment.
 * How different is the success of members of the same family in the same

t The late P. Carey Tupper, Esq., who enjoyed a pension of £600 sterling a year for his services in Spain during Napoleon's invasion, and for which he declined the offer of an English baronetcy and a Spanish barony. During a long residence in that country he formed a very valuable collection of paintings and cartoons, part of which were sent to England. A younger brother was British consul at Caraccas, and subsequently at Riga.

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