A British army, as it was,--is,--and ought to be

by James Campbell

"3. When punishment has made the unprincipled sensible of their crimes, and the good soldiers know they will be supported if they will take the lead, then reason shall again be referred to.

"4. The soldiers composing the detachment of Lieutenant Walsh, 5th regiment, are to be assembled at the head-quarters of their respective brigades, for the purpose of being kept under arms, for ten days, from daylight till nightfall.

"5. The said soldiers are afterwards to be drilled for one month with the young soldiers, and they are not to have either spirits or wine for the whole period.

"6. The Provost-martial and assistant will frequently visit this punishment and notice any impropriety.

"7. Officers commanding brigades will report the manner in which the detachment joined the several battalions on the 22d instant."

Many more of Lord Wellington's observations upon the conduct of soldiers might be adduced, but what I have given, and the orders of Sir Edward Pakenham, are deemed sufficient for the object now in view. But his Grace throughout the whole of his campaigns threw most of the blame for such outrages occurring upon the officers, whom he constantly accused of neglect of duty, or such crimes could not have been perpetrated. I beg leave, however, to observe, and I am alone induced to do so in some measure to justify officers in general, that many of them were both active and zealous in the performance of their duties, but the men they had to deal with were very incorrigible; and those who were then subalterns must well remember that the chief responsibility rested most heavily upon them; for the soldiers were almost never allowed to leave their camps but under their charge; for it was too well known, and I regret to say it, that many of the non-commissioned officers could not be much more trusted than the privates.

As a regimental officer of long experience, not only at home and abroad, but also in the field; as a staff officer during the greater part of the Peninsular war; and with the army of occupation in France, and in other parts of the world, I unhesitatingly declare, that corporal punishment as now inflicted in the army, cannot be dispensed with, but at the risk of the total subversion of all discipline: indeed the hampering commanding officers in this respect, as has been the fashion of late years; and its being fancied, or pretended, that he is the best commander of a regiment, who returns the smallest number of soldiers punished, is, to say the least, very impolitic, and most injurious to the interests of the army; for crimes which should have called for punishment, must in consequence have been passed over, or so inadequately visited upon the offenders, that other men could not have been deterred from being guilty of similar conduct, and the effects of this, I fear, must in the end be dangerous; for what we frequently hear of and read respecting military punishments, in some of the newspapers, can scarcely, when coupled with an unavoidably relaxed state of discipline, be expected to have any other tendency. Solitary confinement, to be at all efficacious in preventing or punishing crimes in the army, keeps the soldier too long away from his necessary exercises and duties, and if it takes place in our common jails, whatever he may have gone into them, he certainly must come out matured in crime, from being the associate of criminals of the worst description; for what jail can contain sufficient cells to separate all who may be sent there. Offenders' lists, common and marching order drills, confinement to barracks, &c. &c., are all well enough, in these quiet times, for trifling offences or irregularities at home or abroad, so long as the soldier knows that he can be brought to the halberts for any act of insubordination on such occasions; but in case of war, and should it be necessary for our army to take the field, this system would never answer. I must beg, however, that it may not be supposed, that I am by any means an advocate for continuing corporal punishments, or that I have any intention of extenuating or justifying what was sometimes practised by officers, under generally, I feel convinced, a mistaken idea, that they were only doing what their duty required of them; but my surprise often was, how officers who composed courts-martial, could by their sentences, always so readily lend themselves to the views, or perhaps badly regulated feelings of their commanders: indeed the trials I have witnessed were sometimes little else than mere matter of form, and they could not well be otherwise, for I have seen a soldier receive two or three hundred, or even more lashes, inflicted with great severity, under a sentence awarded by a drum-head court-martial, after an investigation of a few minutes duration of the charges brought against him. Such arbitrary proceedings as these, were generally abuses of power, with which many men are unfit to be entrusted; and from habit we really thought little of such matters, and the soldiers themselves were only thereby rendered the more callous. I declare, however, that I am at a loss to say, which is preferable—the prompt manner of acting in our navy, where a captain when he orders the punishment of a man, does so on his own serious responsibility, or that of a commanding officer of a regiment, who can generally act as he pleases, whilst all he does is sanctioned by a court martial.

I could easily bring forward many occurrences which would show in the strongest light, how much a serious consideration of both our old and present system in the army, as regards punishments, is required; but so heartily do I detest flogging, that my thoughts have been long directed to devise means of getting rid of it; but I always tremble at the obvious alternative—capital punishments—which must be resorted to, and I should fear, very frequently, as in the French armies, especially upon service, as a substitute for flogging for the maintenance of discipline; for an army without it, is, as the Duke of Wellington observed in one of the orders I have given, a rabble, and must be far more dangerous to the country to which it belongs, than formidable to its enemies.

For years past, I have given this subject most serious consideration. I have weighed all its difficulties, and I can see no way of doing away with flogging in a British army, so long as it is composed of the present description of men. But I am inclined to hope, and I must now beg that all I have to say may be heard with patience—that this most desirable object may be attained by a completely new organisation of our regiments, and bringing into their ranks a totally different description of men, from those who generally offer themselves as recruits—men with other ideas, and altogether other feelings.

But as I wish to bring the subjects I intend to discuss, candidly and fairly before the reader, I must beg leave to transcribe what Sir George Murray lately said at a great public meeting in London, as taken from "the Times." "The British Army did not consist of the constrained conscripts of arbitrary power, but of citizens voluntarily in arms to defend their country, to obey and respect her laws at home, and to resist and repel, with their utmost energy, every effort of her foreign foes, &c. &c." Sir George Murray, as the world knows, and as the British Army in particular knows, is a most able and accomplished Quarter Master General; but as such he could not have had much to say to the maintenance of discipline, for that comes under the Adjutant-General; yet still he will no doubt be looked upon as good authority in such matters, so much so, that I have been induced thus to give what may be considered as his opinion, and which the sequel will still more show to be contrary to mine: indeed, if I were not borne out by the evidence I have even already adduced, my attempting to do any thing towards improvement in our army would seem to be unnecessary and uncalled for.