Soldiers are punished the same, or next day, by order of proper officers, and the right of punishing is proportionate to their ranks.
But when both officers and soldiers have done something which deserves a more severe punishment; when their honour, or their life, or their liberty for more than a very short time, is concerned, then a court-martial meets, and the sentence is known. How will you let an unhappy soldier be confined several weeks with men who are to be hanged, with spies, with the most horrid sort of people, and in the same time be lost for the duty, when they deserve only some lashes. There is no proportion in the punishments.
How is it possible to carry a gentleman before a parcel of dreadful judges, at the same place where an officer of the same rank has been just now cashiered, for a trifling neglect of his duty; for, I suppose, speaking to his next neighbour, in a manoeuvre for going into a house to speak to a pretty girl, when the army is on its march, and a thousand other things? How is it possible to bring to the certainty of being cashiered or dishonoured, a young lad who has made a considerable fault because he had a light head, a too great vivacity, when that young man would be, perhaps, in some years, the best officer of the army, if he had been friendly reprimanded and arrested for some time, without any dishonour?
The law is always severe; and brings with it an eternal shameful mark. When the judges are partial, as on this occasion, it is much worse, because they have the same inconvenience as law itself.
In court-martial, men are judged by their inferiors. How it is averse to discipline, I don't want to say. The publication exposes men to be despised by the least soldier. When men have been before a court-martial, they should be or acquitted or dismissed. What do you think can be produced by the half condemnation of a general officer? What necessity for all the soldiers, all the officers, to know that General Maxwell has been prevented from doing his duty by his being drunk? Where is the man who will not laugh at him, if he is told by him, you are a drunkard; and is it right to ridiculize a man, respectable by his rank, because he drank two or three gills of rum?
These are my reasons against courts-martial, when there is not some considerable fault to punish. According to my affair, I am sorry in seeing the less guilty being the only one punished. However, I shall send to courts-martial but for such crimes that there will be for the judges no way of indulgence and partiality.
With the most tender respect, I am, &c.