MILITARY TRAINING FOR CIVIL SERVICE.
NOTHING can be more essentially necessary than the mainten- ance of official authority in our Colonies, where it is demanded to make up in some degree for the inconveniences of remoteness_ But in the hands of indiscreet men the very means taken to as- sert authority may defeat it; and this result is too often brought about by the selection of officers not the best qualified for the pe- culiar kind of authority required. It is presumed that as military men are versed in the arts of discipline they must be good at managing a colony ; but the discipline enforced by military men is not of the sort demanded in the Colonies of Britain.
The recent Courts-martial at Portsmouth might alone serve to prove the unfit training of a military life for colonial government. Here are two officers of a ship, the First Lieutenant and the Sail- ing Master, accused of insubordination. The Master's case is with some admitted breach of vigilance, which, how- ever excusable, as indeed it appears to have been, weakens the case as an example. He may have been tyrannically used, but he did sleep at his post. In Lieutenant Branch's case also ther.e was one breach of discipline, but of the most trifling sort : it- consisted merely of an error in judgment, and it was expiated by a suitable penalty in the shape of an admonition received. Mr. Branch officially stated a fact to an officer interested in know- ing it but not the Lieutenant's own commander, whom he passed over in doing so ; and he received an admonition at the moment, which was officially reported, and settled the affair. The other charges against him were divers acts of "disrespectful" behaviour, in some instances purely constructive ; and in all pronounced by the award of the Court-martial to have been "frivolous and vexa- tious." It was proved as distinctly as human testimony can prove anything, that Mr. Branch was an efficient, steady, zealous, and highly respectful officer. He is acquitted. But the case discloses facts of which the award does not dis- pose. It appears that that habitually efficient and respectable officer habitually endured such treatment as is exemplified by these "frivolous and vexatious " charges. He was made to serve as the test of a perverse authority doubtful of itself, and ready to ascertain its own influence by pressincr upon the defe- rential obedience of natures really stronger ; and he was obliged by the practice of the service to endure that infliction with an air of worship for the person who so ill represented authority. This is a bad training for colonial government—as bad to the victim as to the victimizer. The one it must tend to harden in the exer- cise of petty tyranny ; the other it must inure to injustice, to blind obedience, to an undue preference of persons over things or affairs. Such men as Mr. Branch's commander are traitors to real discipline of any sort. They must either be supported at the expense of justice—and injustice is fatal to moral influence, or their authority must be set aside by the interposition of a higher —which is a serious breach of regular routine. But in a ship there is that exact gradation of authority in a single line, from below upwards, which makes the risk of such inconvenience in- evitable, and at the same time supplies some counteraction. In civil affairs there is no such singleness in the gradation of author- ity; whole classes of functionaries necessarily act with consider- able independence of superior official rank : by the " constitu- tion " the whole judicial body is presumed, during good beha- viour, to be independent ; the ecclesiastical body owns only a partial obedience ; and all classes may plead " the law " as su- perior to any impersonated authority. A training in personal obedience necessarily habituates the mind to a style of discipline totally different from that needed in civil affairs. Not only will it make the officer prone to arbitrary behaviour, but it weakens his faculty for obtaining, by other means, that moral influence which is demanded for the fulfilment of his duties and the due support of his official authority. This is no speculative calculation, but is proved only too sub- stantially and distinctly and frequently by the facts. A case has recently come to our knowledge. A publication in one of the West Indian colonies contained some strictures on a matter of pub- lic interest, which were known to represent sentiments personally entertained by the Chief Justice. The .Governor, a military man, called the Chief Justice to account ; which was in itself a gross breach of propriety, as there was no reason to impute the author- ship to the Judge except the concurrence of sentiments. Even if he had been the author, it would remain to be shown that in accepting a judicial seat a man loses his right to express his opinion out of court. But in point of fact, the Chief Justice was not the author of the paper, and he expressly disclaimed the au- thorship. There at least the matter ought to have rested ; but the Governor could not be satisfied without instituting an irregu- lar gossiping inquiry to fish out some circumstantial evidence which should convict of falsehood the Chief Justice presiding over the law in the colony ! Not only so, but, the dispute con- tinuing, the Governor actually went so far as to suspend the Chief Justice from the exercise of his functions ! The Chief Justice appealed to the Home Government, and the suspending or- der of the Governor is reversed. Can that annul the mischief caused
by the barrack-room style of demeanour? Not at all : the colo- nists, whose interests seem to be forgotton in the desire to shield an official, can have no confidence in the administration of the law while they are under a Governor who shows 'so little deference for the judicial bench ; and the shock to civil authority is not terminated, but increased, by the severe condemnation of its highest representative, implied in the reversal of his order. There is yet a lower deep. We see by the West India papers that the Attorney-General of the same colony has also been sus- pended about the same affair. Should the Attorney-General—a highly respected gentleman of colour—follow the Judge's ex- ample in appealing, with similar success, the scandal will be doubled; unless, indeed, this second sally should convince even the officials in Downing Street that the gallant officer is a bad Governor.
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