Sydney Gazette [1818]:
death of Maclaine

In the Extracts from the India Papers inserted in our present columns, we have felt our warmest sympathies excited by the melancholy tidings of the death of Lieutenant JOHN MACLAINE, of the 73d Regiment. The visitations of Divine Providence seldom produce a greater portion of regret than when youth and talent are prematurely cut off, and the prospects they hold out, of dispensing continued happiness and consolation to their Relatives and Friends, suddenly disappointed, and fatally arrested -- by the hand of death! This remark peculiarly applies to the lamented subject of this obituary. Mr. Maclaine entered very early in life into military service; and four years of that life were passed with his Regiment in this Colony, the chief part of which time, and until his return to Europe, he was Aide-de-Camp to His Excellency General Macquarie, to whom he was nearly related; and here all who knew him will bear the most cordial testimony to the goodness of his heart, the urbanity of his manners, and those amiable qualities which distinguish the soldier and signify the man; and though the levities of youth may sometimes be contrasted with the sober deportment of maturer years, and Mr. Maclaine might not be entirely exempt from his share of those frailties to which inexperienced youth is liable, yet they never threw a shade over his private virtues, or derogated from that purity of principle which governed all his actions, and endeared him to his numerous friends and associates.

Mr. Maclaine left this Colony four years ago for England, where he remained but a short time before he joined the 2d battalion of his Regiment on the Continent, and afterwards served under the illustrious WELLINGTON in France; from whence he joined the 73d at Ceylon; and in gallantly leading a detachment, fell, at the early age of 25, in the manner detailed in the extracts we have inserted.

In expressing our regret at an event that will be long and sincerely deplored by this young Gentleman's Relations and Friends, we are yielding an unfeigned tribute of respect to departed merit, which claims, and will ever claim, an honorable rank and remembrance in Society, and be transmitted, with like endearing recollections to posterity.

Source:
Sydney Gazette 25 July 1818 pp.2-3.

Manuscript Transcripts
Transcript prepared by Robin Walsh
Macquarie University Library, Sydney, Australia. © 2003

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