CHARLES NAPIER S REMARKS ON MILITARY LAW AND FLOGGING.

AT first sight it would seem that little interest could be imparted to military law, and none at all to such a hackneyed subject as flogging. This notion, however, is confuted by the volume before us; in which the strong display of the author's character, and his long experience and thorough mastery of the subject, invest old matter with new attractions, or put it in a new light. When General NAPIER argues, he does not set forth the flimsy notions of a mere theorist, or the narrow views of a prejudiced and habit-hardened soldier; but the reasons of a thoughtful and practised man of ability, who, whilst he allows full weight to the facts he observes, endeavours to investigate the principles in which they originate. Neither does he reason, like most other men, but animates his arguments, or turns them into pictures of a soldier's life, a soldier's duty, or a soldier's career.

Of course we are not holding up General NAPIER as dmodel of style, arrangement, or philosophical impartiality. His

method is discursive ; his manner peculiar—hearty, rough, and racy ; and it is easy to see that in his heart he is a disciplinarian after the straitest sect. The object of his book, indeed, is to im- prove discipline by improving the laws which regulate it. And to effect this, the author begins by considering the natural state of an army, and its distinguishing characteristic; deciding that war is its natural condition, and obedience—unscrupulous, implicit, in- stant obedience— its first law. To attain this perfect obe- dience in the field, is the object of all discipline, and of every pre- paratory exercise; and to enforce it on active service, death, flogging, any and every punishment, must be resorted to at the will of the commander. Not that, this is not evil and horrible, but because it is necessary to prevent greater evils and greater hor- rors ; and the guilt is chargeable upon the men who render war necessary, and the rulers who declare it, not upon the profes- sional gentlemen who undertake to wage it. On colonial service in peace, the soldiery are in an intermediate stale, not requiring such prompt and imperatorial punishments as in war, but still; from various circumstances, a strictness and severity that will not permit of the abrogation of flogging, so far as the General can at present see his way. On home service, during peace, he conceives it may be safely—though it would be all the better for being gradually—abolished, because the necessity for instant obe- dience is not so urgent ; and the habit of obedience may be en- forced, and the requisite discipline maintained, by other modes. Amongst these are certain stimuli,—as honorary distinctions, limited service, pensions, and games ; as well as the substitution of other punishments,—amongst which, blistering holds a first place in the General's opinion, more especially for that root of all military evil, drunkenness.

The opinion of CHARLES NAPIER on the subject of the abolition of flogging, is entitled to weight, not only from his long experience in war and in responsible situations, but because no "compunc- tious visitings of nature" have conduced to his conclusion. "The great question," says he, "is not so much, is it cruel ? is it unholy? is it this, that, and fother ? but, is it effectual ?" And though the General inclines to think that, if properly proportioned, it would be effectual, yet as this can rarely or never be the case, it does harm, not reforming the criminal himself, shocking or harden- ing the feelings of his companions, inducing a degree of ill-will towards the regimental, and of disrespect or ingratitude towards the superior officers, from an idea that their conduct in the dimi- nution of punishment is forced upon them by the public, " which public every vagabond in the army hopes to have at his back if he quarrels with his commander. Nor is he disappointed."

We have not, nor was it our intention, exhausted or even enu- merated the different arguments of our author on flogging. Stilt less is it our purpose to go into the subject of riots, courts-martial, the right to dismiss an officer without trial, and other points re- lating to the privileges and functions of officers, or to the parti- cular management of soldiers. We have said enough to convey a* general idea of the work to those who may feel an interest in ftee minutice ; and a few miscellaneous extracts will show the power- ful and effective manner its which they are handled.

DITS Ot °DEMI:NUE, AND HOW ACQUIRED.

Soldiers must obey in all things. They may, and do laugh at foolish orders, but they nevertheless obey; not because they are blindly obedient, but because they know that to disobey is to break the backbone of their profession. To regidarity of habit the soldier is trained : be is taught the necessity uf It tit principle, and is obliged to practise it ; the first lesson he learns is to be exact m waiting upon time; his hours of going to bed, of rising, of going to meals, of going to psradea, are all fixed, and be is punished if he neglects to attend to them with precision: his person, his arms, his room, must all be cleaned, and they are examined at least twice a day in every well-commanded regiment. Now we know that if arms are cleaned once a month, and carefully put by, they would remain perfectly serviceable; and that men and rooms, if examined once a day, or once in two or three days, would be sufficiently watched to se- cure cleanliness ; but then habits would be lost. The iv ksonwness of having a musket constantly in the hand, and of ever watching time, would gradually in- crease, and encroach upon the system of obedience; and the greater the distance between the hours when obedience is demanded, the greater number of instances

of disobedience would occur, till finally disobedience would become the rule, obedience the exception; and a man's body being equally dependent upou habit with his mind, would soon feel the musket to be no longer its companion, but its torment ; and a shadow falls upon the glory of an army when soldiers grow tired of their arms.

Thus, by frequent and close attention to the ordinary proceedings of a camp or gal rim), exact obedience becomes a habit ; and men accustomed to obey in tritres, rarely disobey in matters of importance. So are soldiers trained for war.

• SOLITARY CONFINEMENT AS IT IS.

Unless imprisonment, and more especially solitary confinement, be perfectly i executed and instantly applied after the commission of crime, it s idle to expect good effects. If a man is sentenced to solitary confinement, and that a comrade can hold converse with him through the door, the letter of his sen- tence is assuredly executed, he is alone in his cell as far as his body is concerned, but his mind is not alone: a man can be perfectly amused without seeing or touching his companion; the spirit of the sentence remains in such cases unfulfilled : one might as well say that Pyramus and Thisbe were in solitary confinement ! Even the "hole in Me wall" acts its part in military life; for I rarely knew a black-bole door that had not a hole quickly bored in it, through which, with a quill and a bladder, as touch in could be compassionately intro- duced by some comrade or tender Tbisby, as would reconcile the involuntary hermit to his fate, and furnish him with spirits to encounter any sentence.

These spiritual perforations are neatly stuffed with col .ed bread, Kr as to give no offence to the eye of a commanding officer' and to furnieh the fullest excuse to the non-commissioned officer of the guard not to see them, unless when he has a spite at the prisoner, to indulge in which he is willinr to risk the

of the whole regiment by a discovery.

FACTS UPON FLOGGING.

The punishment of flogging is not only an unequal infliction, for the above reasons,—namely, that for similar offences it is applied by unequal forces, in unequal quantities, and by unequal wille, to unequal powers of endurance,—but also because the first punishment is the most cruel. A man who has been fre- quently flogged feels it less every time—his back gets callous : therefore, he is less punished in proportion as he deseives it inure; and being thus hardened, both morally and physically, be sometimes makes a joke of his punishment. I have often heard men, while receiving the lash, set the whole regiment laugh- iug ; others blaspheme; others, again, bear their agonies with a fortitude which elicits the admiration of the spectators. All this does harm to the minds of Men, and especially of young men. The habit of seein,s a man tortured, of seeing Ids blood spring, his convulsions and writhings of agony, and hearing his hoirible shrieks, is, I repeat, mischievous to the human Least, and hardens it,against the nobler feelings. •

I have seen many hundreds of men flogged, and have always observed that when the skin is thoroughly cut up, or flayed off, the peat pain subsides. Men are frequently convulsed and screaming durina' the time they receive from (me lash to three hundred lashes, and then they bear the remainder, even to eight hundred or a thousand lashes, without a groan : they will often lie as if without life, and the drummers appear to be flogging a lump of dead, raw flesh. Now, 1 have frequently observed that, in these cases, the faces of the spectators aisumed a look ilf disgust ; there was always a low whispering sound, scarcely audible, issuing from tile apparently stern and silent ranks; a sound arising from lips that spoke not; but that sound was produced by hearts that felt deeply : and this, too, when the soldiers believed in its justice, and approved of the punishment ; when the %%Ming drummers had, up to that moment, laid on the lash with great asperity. This low and scarcely audible sound spoke aloud to my mind that the punishment had become excessive—that the culprit had disappeared and the martyr taken his place.

SENTRIES.

Whenever any thing or any place requires to be guarded, it does not always come into the heads of commanders to think whether seine simple mechanical means of safeguard cannot be discovered; and they exclaim, • Oh, place a sentry! " as if it were a trifle to place a sentry. General officers sometimes forget, and civil governors may not know, that each sentry demands (besides a considerable inciease of duty to the corpopals on guard) the sactitice of three men's sleep every night throughout the year,--that in time of peace, when garrisons are small, the necessai y duties are very severe on the private soldiers, who reason thus : " Here I am in the Colonies for ten or fifteen years: I shall have to sit up every third or fourth night for the whole of that period; and if a fool gets the command, and aids a few sentries, I shall not have above three nights in my bed during the week." Now, will any man tell me that the addi- tion of a single sentry does not spiead great and reasonable discontent through the whole garrison, unless there be an evident necessity for such an increase of discomfort ? Besides, where malaria prevails, this hardship is injurious to the health of the soldiers; for in hot climates men are more exposed to illness in the night than in the day. No man who has studied the health of the soldiers in colonial garrisons, will dispute this fact. It would be useful if the number of nights in bed, which are allowed to the soldier in each colony and at home, were reported in a monthly return to bead-quarters; and the abuse of placing sentries unnecessarily would then be seen, and in some measure corrected. At present it is very great : for instance' in the Ionian Islands, there are some fifty or sixty British soldiers kept out of bed all the year round, to give sentries at the doors of Greek Senators and Itegents !

THE COLOURSA HOMERIC PICTURE, AND SKETCHES.

Great, then, is the value of the standard : it is a telegraph in the centre of

the battle to speak the changes of the day to the wings. Its importance has, therefore, been immense in all ages, among all nations, and in all kinds of war " Defend the colours ! form .upon the colours ! " is the first cry and first thouilit of a soldier when any mischance of battle has produced disorder: then do cries, shouts, firing, blows, and all the tumult of the combat, thicken round the standard ; it contains the honour of the band, and the brave press round its bearer !

An instance of the attachment shown by our troops to their standards occurred after the battle of Commie. It was night. The regimental colour of the Fiftieth iGeneral Napier's own regiment; was missing ; a cry arose that it had been lost ; the soldiers were furious; the present Sir Henry Farm, with a loud and angry voice called out, "No, no ! the Fiftieth cannot have lost their co.

lours !' They were not lost. Two gallant Ensigns, Stewart a Scotehman and Moore an Irishman, had been slain, as they bole the banners charging through the village of El Vine : two colour-sergeants, whose names I cannot recollect, seizing the prostrate colours, bravely continued the chaige, carrying them through the battle. When the fight was done, an ifficer received one of these standards from the sergeant : it was now dark, and he allowed his alarm for the safety of the colours to overpower his better judgment : he forgot both their use and their honour, and had gone to the rear, intending to embark with them' though the regiment was still in its position. The stray colour was found, and the soldiers were pacified ; but this officer never could remove the feeling which his well-meaning but ill-judged caution had produced against him. This anecdote shows the sentiments entertained by British troops for their colours; sentiments pervading all ranks, from the general to the drummer. Sir Henry Farm's words, thus loudly expressed, rendered him a favourite with the

Fiftieth Regiment ever after. • • • •

When colours are worn out, they ought not to be thrown away. I under- stand that the Fiftieth, having been lately made a royal regiment, received , blue standard, and the silk of the old colours was burned with much cerement- The wood of the spear was made into a snuffbox; and its lid encloses tile ashes of that black banner which had so often waved amidst the white curling smoke of the battle. On this box are engraved the names of those who fril bearing the colours in combat.

A CHAR,ACTER.

The late George Callender, of Craigforth, was one of those extraordinary men who had abilities of a high cast. That he died but little known w, an oifi. cer, is to be accounted for by that sacrifice of ambition to convenierree sed pleasure, which seems so unaccountable in some men. His manners, his toe. rage, his talents, his acute and ready wit, his power of suiting himself tali, company, fitted him for any and for all : in the camp or at the court, in the pot-house or at a conventicle, George Callender was equally at his ease; per. haps the least so in the last. He never seemed to seek any thing; but wherever Fortune cast him, for that place he seemed modelled. His mind appeared capable of commanding a company or an army with nearly equal facility. have rarely met with so admirable a soldier. In temper he was somewhat fiery, Isis mind active and full of resources, his body agile and active but strong withal. He quitted the army young, though a Lieutenant-Colonel. A twee. rite with Sir John Moore, and with all those who had the gift of the military loaves and fishes: Callender sold out in 1806, and disappeared from the

tary horizon.

RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH OBEDIENCE.

From martinets, from the amateurs of "grand reviews," from God knees who, from what the soldiers call "all sorts," I have heard of the superiority of Austrian, Prussian, and Russian discipline and perfect obedience, compared to that of our soldiers. I dare swear that the reader, if he has attended the humbugging (I crave pardon for using so vulgar an expression) at" Kalish," will tell me of " Russian obedience." I will answer by telling him a story ; and it may, perhaps, draw the attention of some of those gentlemen who talk of British army as a mass of "brute force," and speak of what they term our "blind obedience," in a somewhat crude and contemptuous manner, I may perhaps say displaying ignorance; for military obedience is the result of re- flection, nut of 'blindness, and is invariably found to be most perfect among the most civilized nations. To proceed with my story: when the late Duke of York was on the Continent, in the early part of the war, be had sonic of these obedient Russians with him. A redoubt was to be carlied by storm, and he ordered three Russian regiments to make the attack. They marched up steadily under a heavy fire, found a deep ditch with palisades in it : the Rum- sians halted, looked at the obstacles for a few seconds, and then reined. A second and a third time these Scythian antoniatons were marched up to the attack ; and again aunt a third time they retired with great loss, brave, stupid, and "blindly obedient." At last, that ever glorious soldier, Sir Ralph Aber-

crombie, provoked at their failure, said to the Duke of York, "If your Royal Highness will allow me to send three light infantry companies of Englishmen, I will answer for the redoubt being taken in ten minutes., The Duke consented. The Englishmen advanced at a rapid pace, ran up to tl.e edge of the ditch, halted an instant, to contemplate the unexpected defences below, and then in- trepidly leaped down ; away went the palisades with a crash, while, cheered by their own animating shouts, the victors sprang upon the parapet, and the re- doubt was taken !