"J. 0." ON THE MHOW COURT-MARTIAL.. O NE of the most
able of our public writers has called atten- tion in the current number of the Cornhill Magazine to the -subject of courts-martial, in a paper entitled " The Story of the Mhow Court-Martial." This article has a general and a special object. With the general object every liberal must sympathize, and must agree with " J. O.," that the proceedings of courts-martial are a great public scandal, that they ought to be conducted strictly according to the established rules of British jurisprudence, that these -courts as at present constituted are intolerably dilatory, that they admit evidence which ought to be rejected, reject evidence which ought to be received, are very lax in the matter of hard swearing, and are, in short, most feeble and unsatisfactory tribunals. His suggestion of a Parliamentary Committee, or Royal Commission, to inquire into the working of the system, is well-timed, and will be heartily supported.
But with respect to his special object the case is widely differ- -mt. He thus states it himself :—" I believe I shall be discharging a useful public duty if I endeavour to draw up a more complete and intelligible narrative of that complicated and painful affair (the Mhow Court-Martial), than can be collected from the pro- ceedings of the Court as published by order of the House of Commons." Possibly a good purpose might have been answered had the narrative which he gives us been as fair as it is in- telligible and able. But this is not so. If "J. 0." had held a brief for the prosecution he could not have arranged or handled his materials in a more masterly manner with a view to obtaining a conviction at the impending trial of Colonel Crawley. It is the speech of a leading counsel for the prosecution, delivered before the Court is sitting ; a sensation paper, likely to deprive the accused of what small chance he still has of a fair trial. The publication of such a paper at this time is all the more unfair, because the tribunal, as " J. 0." has pointed out, is so weak. There will be no first-rate judge to keep the Court about to sit at Aldershot steadily to the points at issue. That Court will be composed of men unused to sift facts, members of a profession notoriously sensitive to the applause and censures of the press. However desirous they may be of doing their duty, it is almost certain that they will be influenced by the feeling out of -doors, and the feeling out of doors will be probably leavened through and through with "J. O.'s" story. For not one in a thousand of those who read this article in the Cornhill Magazine will be likely to turn to the Blue Book to see whether the case is fairly put, and the few who may be sufficiently interested to do so will probably shrug their shoulders and hold their tongues. The consequence will be that the whole pack of smaller men will take up the cry of such a leader. The country has already been lashed by the newspapers into a thirst for vengeance, and here is "J. 0.," a trusted guide, saying, at the last moment, in all but so many words, " This man who is about to be tried is the guilty man."
I have no space here to do more than touch upon one or two of the most important points in " the story," and shall confine my own remarks to what may be gathered within the four corners of the Blue Book itself, having no private sources of informa- tion. The first grave assertion in " J. 0.'a" " story " is, that the morale and discipline of the regiment were good when Colonel Crawley joined, and that he himself admitted this with respect to
the non-commissioned offiee.xs, and men. It would have been fair at least to have noticed the fact that the brigadier who inspected the regiment a fortnight before Colonel Crawley joined expressed his dissatisfaction with it, and that two of Colonel Crawley's earlie.t orders are aimed against " a system amongst the non-corn- nfissioned ranks of screening, or endeavouring to screen, crime, particularly the crime of drunkenness ;" and " the slovenly manner in which the serjeant-majors in particular, and other non-commis- sioned officers, perform their duties." As to the officers who were with the regiment, the senior captain who was in command had just been severely censured for highly insubordinate conduct to the brigadier of the station. Within a week of joining, Colonel Crawley issued two orders directing certain returns of arms, ammu- nition, &c., to be made. With the first of these orders only half the officers commanding troops, with the second only two of them, thought fit to comply ; and within a fortnight, on the occasion of the mess dinner given to the inspecting general and his staff, they refused to pay for the extra wine which was drunk, and their newly arrived colonel had to pay the whole bill himself. In the face of these, and many like facts, is it fair to represent the morale and discipline of the regiment as admirable, and to say that Colonel Crawley was well received by his officers?
Let me now turn to the specific charges of the court-martial. "The only real issue," says "J. 0.," "into which the Court had to inquire, was a very narrow one ; whether, on two specified occasions, the 1st of May, 1861, and the 1st of January, 1862, Colonel Crawley had or had not been present at the muster parades of his regiment." Accepting this issue (and waiving the charge of habitual absence from musters made by Mr. Smales against Colonel Crawley, which broke down), how stands the matter? " J. 0." states that the weight of the evidence was enormously on the side of the defendant Smales's assertion that Colonel Crawley was absent. Let me analyze it. In the first place, the muster rolls for May 1st, 1861, and January fat, 1862, certify that Colonel Crawley was present on each of those occasions. The mustering officer has to sign at the foot of these rolls a declaration that he saw, at the time of taking the muster, the officers borne upon the roll as present. The roll for May is signed by Captain Swindley, a witness most hostile to Colonel Crawley, acting paymaster for the time ; that for January by Mr. Smales himself. But Captain Swindley ex- plained in his evidence that he did not understand this form in its obvious sense. So let this documentary evidence go for nothing, and let us turn to the viva voce evidence. As to the muster on May 1, 1861, there were twenty-three witnesses examined. One of these withdrew his evidence by leave of the Court, on the ground that he had mistaken the muster. Of the remaining twenty-two, seven declared that they saw Colonel Crawley during the muster of the troops, looking on in plain clothes, at a distance of from thirty to seventy yards from the left front of the regiment. Seven more admit on cross-examina- tion that they saw him inspect the officers' horses at the end of the muster. One of these, Ridingnio.ster Malone, a most hostile witness to Colonel Crawley, after at first denying in his evidence in chief that the Colonel was present, admits—" Colonel Crawley did inspect the officers' horses on the 1st of May, 1861: I did call over the officers' horses to Colonel Crawley, and describe them from the register." Of the remaining eight, four say they did not see the Colonel ; one says the Colonel was not present while his troop (the second from the front) was on the ground ; one remembers Colonel Crawley as present at one muster parade only, that of November 1, and is not further pressed. Two only, Serjeant-Majors Lilley and Wakefield, swear point blank that the Colonel was not present, and are not cross-examined by him on this point. I venture to say that no person accus- tomed to weigh evidence can doubt that Colonel Crawley was in plain clothes looking on during the latter part, at any rate, of this parade muster, and that at the end of it he rode up and in- spected formally the officers' horses.
As to the muster parade of January 1st, 1862, this was the day on which the regiment went from tents into barracks. Colonel Crawley's case is, that he was in the barracks and cavalry lines with the quartermaster, looking after the arrangements, and, therefore, not on the parade ground, but within sight of the regi- ment, and that he saw them file past into the horse lines. Upon this point twenty witnesses are examined. Of these seventeen admit that they saw Colonel Crawley on that morning at different places in the lines and barracks, while the troops were coming in from
the muster parade. Quartermaster Woodin, a witness called both for the prosecution and defence, but hostile to Colonel Crawley, admits meeting the Colonel at the barracks early by appointment, and afterwards accompanying him into the horse lines while the troops were in the act of filing into the lines ; while Serjeant Turton, a thoroughly hostile witness, admits, on cross-examina- tion, that Colonel Crawley ordered him on that morning to file his troop out of the lines and in again, and that the Colonel saw the troop as they filed into the lines. The remaining three swear that they did not see the Colonel on that morning. Here, again, the evidence, taken as a whole, leaves no doubt whatever as to the facts. The Colonel was not on the ground at the muster parade ; but he was within sight of the regiment during the parade, in the barracks and cavalry lines ; he watched several, if not all of the troops, file into the lines, and made one troop, which had come in at first in a slovenly manner, file in a second time.
It is a soldier's question, rather than a civilian's, whether on these two occasions Colonel Crawley was so far present at muster as to justify him in signing the declaration in the Adjutant's roll. As a matter of common sense, and common honesty, I should say that he was undoubtedly present, and entitled to sign.
I forbear from saying a word as to the arrest of the serjeants, or of the conduct of the trial. These will be the subjects of inquiry at the coming court-martial. But I must deny that their evidence which was actually taken upon these points (and there is no reason to believe that the Court did not give it due weight) could have altered the verdict. Notwithstanding all the mismanagement of the trial, a mass of evidence is heaped together upon these two points which, though very contradictory on minor details, is quite clear and reconcileable as to the broad facts. No jury or court with that evidence before them could have found any other verdict. The Queen has conditionally pardoned Mr. Smales, but that pardon must have been granted on some technical ground, rather than on the merits.
I am not pleading Colonel Crawley's cause, I am only asking for fair play. "J. 0." claims to be pleading the cause of the weak against the strong. It appears to me that " the weak," for present purposes, is the man whom the Horse Guards are prosecuting, and against whom the press of the country, with scarcely an exception, are banded together. He has either been unwilling, or unable, to put his case before the country in the -papers. Let us hold our judgments till we see what that case is as it will be established under the eyes of the whole nation at the coming trial. I must end as I began, by saying that I hope to sec a Parliamentary Committee or Royal Commission at work upon the whole subject of courts-martial, that I hope to see those tribunals thoroughly reformed in the directions indicated by " J. 0." in this article ; but these benefits will be dearly purchased, if his example should be followed by men of his ability and power, and the custom of appearing for the prosecution on the eve of exciting trials should hereafter obtain amongst our best and ablest public writers.
T . HUGHES.
* [There is nothing so hard in England as to get a fair trial for a man accused of cruelty. When a Jacob Omnium" is the accuser it is nearly impossible. We therefore publish with pleasure an argu- ment which, whether Colonel Crawley be tyrant or victim, is equally a plea for justice.—En. Spectator.]
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