The Express.
London, England, 1861-09-21 00:00:00

TO OUR READERS.

SPORTINO INTELLIOENCE.

A !ate edition of the Express is published every
evenivg during the racing season, containing the
results of the dad's rams.

THAT a Commanding Officer and his Adjutant
should be cruelly assassinated by one of their own
men in their own barrack-square at • moment
when aU seemed order, discipline, and loyalty, is a
startling and serious event. In the soldier's
home, as be is proud to call his barracks, an
Englishman is to be found crouching in the door-
way, and—with the deliberate and practised aim
he has been taught to use against his enemy of the
battle-field—turning his deadly weapon against
his brother soldier and his officer. Revenge is •
terrible instinct to arouse even in war against right-
ful enemies, but scarcely among the chain-gangs
of the convicts, or the desperate haunts
of the lowest outcasts of society, hrve there hap-
pened such savage murders for such trivial mo-
tives as this and some others which have been lately
committed by soldiers on their officers. It is not
very long since a sergeant was shot dead at Chat-
ham, and hardly a year bas passed since another

non-commissioned officer fell a victim to the
spite of a soldier whom it was his duty to report
for neglecting to do some very insignificant work
of the barrack-room. At the present time a sol-
dier awaits his execution for besting out the
brains of the sergeant whose duty it was to see the
man's faults corrected. In all these cases there
are none of the common aggravating circumstances
which move men to revenge—no personal insult—
no outrage upon a wife, a child, or a sister. The re-
venge in every case has been founded upon the
most ignorant and brutish notions, and the mur-
derous acts have been committed in a spirit more
like that of the Romish brigands than of English-
men. The man M'CAPPILLAY, who, though young
in the service, is already evidently too familiar
with military punishments, appears to have been
brought before the Colonel of the depot battalion
by the Adjutant for failing to keep strangers and
children away from the officers' mess-room. Whe-
ther the man understood his orders fully we are not
at present informed ; it has been said he mis-
took them, and thus incurred the blame
which led to his being sent to the guard-room
by the Adjutant, the late Captain I:l•Nuan, who
happened to pass when the children were playing
before the mess-room. The avid's°, given at the
Inquest necessarily referred only to the facts
proving the crime ; it has yet to be shown what
were the circumstances connected possibly with
WCarvcsar's remand to the guard-room, and
subsequent confinement to barracks for a fort-
night. It is all but incredible that such
malice could have been aroused by this par-
ticular punishment, because confinement to the
barrack-square would not be viewed at all as a
serious disgrace by the man's comrades. It
probably come out that WC/JIIIMAY had a long
account against him in the defaulters' book, that he
had not gained the satins' of his officers, and that
his behaviour at the time when first sent to the
guard-room by order of the Adjutant, and when
he was last brought up before the late Colonel
Caorros, was such as fully to deserve the moderate
poisiehmsat awarded to him.
These are points of minor importance, perhaps,
as regards the conviction and final punishment of
the murderer, but they have every important bearing
upon the question of crime in the army, and the
system of military punishments. Considering
that we draw our recruits for the army from all
aorta and conditions of men, caring very little
about the antecedents of a raw recruit because we
know the sergeant-major will do a good deal
towards bring,tig him into a respectable form, both
physically and morally—it is a question whether
by a rigid system of recording crimes,
and accumulating punishments against a de-
faulter, we are not goading ignorant and
often violent men into a reckless state
of hatred of the service and animosity against the
officers. The measures for the education and
general improvement of the soldier which Cie late
Lord H brought about are unquestionably
operating for the benefit of the service, and the
crime of murder is happily rare in the army, but the
number of men under punishment in barrack cells
and in the military prisons, with deserters at large,
forms a terrible incubus upon the service. Until
this is permanently nduced by railing the 'AMU. ei
the soldier, a batter gigs of rscruHts--men who
are
posed to become soldiers by choice, and not by
force of adversity—will not offer.
This case at Preston, so lamentable in the death
of two excellent officers, taken in con-
nexion with others to which we have referred,
would incline us to examine very closely into the
customary punishments for minor offences in the
army, especially as to the powe- and opportunities
which are virtually in the hands of the non-oom-
missioned officers. The punishment for a trifling
offence may be so out of proportion as to have a
far more irritating effect upon a weak mind than
a very heavy punishment for • great crime. The
one would be rebelled against, when the other
would be submitted to as a fate well merited.
Strict discipline is of course indispensable, but this
may, we illumine, be maintained without any of
that " hectoring " which inevitably excites the
wrath of an obstinate dolt as much as it does a
high-spirited fellow. It should be remembered alas
that soldiers are to be dealt with as men with arms
in their hands. Like the butcher who, in a