The Home and Foreign Review. January, 1864. (Williams and Norgate.)--Military
courts-martial is a subject which is handled with rare impartiality. The writer suggests three remedies for the evils of the present system-1. To appoint a lawyer to be president, and the redaction of the military members to the position of jurymen ; 2. To train a certain number of officers in a knowledge of military law, so that they may act as presidents ; 3. To have a permanent court sitting in London, presided over by a lawyer, and answering to the Court of Arches or the Admiralty Court. With the principles advocated in this article our readers are already familiar through our own pages, and, indeed, we have at different times suggested the two first of the writer's proposed remedies. The subject here is discussed more continuously than is possible in a newspaper, and the necessity of adopting some plan which shall be in harmony with the feelings of military men is very strongly and very properly insisted on. This number contains, also, a pleasant and friendly criticism of Mr. Gladstone's financial statements ; the German side of the constitutional question in Schleswig-Holstein strongly put, which is valuable because we are in danger at this moment of seeing nothing but the Danish side ; a paper on the dissolution of the monasteries, which we commend to the notice of the Pope, as it may reconcile him to much that he anathematizes in the present state of Italy ; and finally, a review of Mr. Fronde, which, while it does justice to his powers of composition, charges him with most unjustifiable tampering with his authorities. The writer is precise in his statements and references to the documents, and so temperate that one is disposed to believe his charges to be well founded. The other papers are of an instructive character, and the "contemporary literature" of loss interest than usual. This, however, is due to the character of the publications of the quarter.
Previous page
