The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-12 00:00:00

"DARAL, the sergeant-major who was imprisoned at
the same time with LILLEY and WAKEFIELD, and
who would be a most important witness as to the
treatment which they received, is not to be sent
home." This information is of a piece with all the
rest,but yet, if it be true, it will be a most scandalous
proceeding. It is the universal rule in England,
and one which has excited the envy of foreign na-
tions, and awakened the just pride of her own people,
to consider every man innocent until he is proved
guilty. Granted that, assuming this plea, Colonel
CRAWLEY is clear of the many grave charges im-
puted against him, there is one question to be asked
which his upholders would find it difficult to answer.
Why does he not act like an innocent man under
the presence of so heavy an accusation would be
certain to do ? Why does he not insist on every
witness being produced who is supposed to be
capable of affording the slightest clue to the mystery
hinted at ? Why does he not summon his enemies
instead of keeping them back; and then, face to face,
in the light of day, himself confute their statements,
and confound their charges ? That is the only way
to take from slander the sting, and to rob injustice
of its victory. That is the only way is which an
English public will brook to see an affair investi-
gated which concerns the vital interests of an
army, and relates to the honour and impartiality
of some high in rank in our Eastern possessions.
It is a pity that Colonel CRAWLEY has no friends
or admirers to admonish him of the imprudence of
his conduct. Such subterfuges as those chronicled
in the letter made mention of above, will not suffice
to shut the door upon inquiry, and to hush np what
must be made clear. Statements have been put font.
and direct accusations preferred against an officer,
high in rank and potent in influence. Public opi-
nion expressed in Parliament and elsewhere has
occasioned the order for a court-martial. It is too
much to suppose that now at the eleventh hour, as
it were, all that has been gained is to be made null
and void, and after a few lifeless reports an acquittal
is to be granted the accused. Not so do we
read law and justice in this land, and not
ao, will men of honour and integrity have it exhi-
bited to the world, that their country is satisfied to
vindicate the cause of the oppressed. Sergeant-
Major LILLEY has departed this life. For him
tyranny can do no more wrong, and cruelty can
impose no infliction. But, inasmuch as he was
injured, being dead, he yet lives to speak his
wrongs until they are redressed. They live in the
memory of all who have read his story, and will
remain a stain in the annals of our military records
if some reparation is not made over his grave. It
is to be trusted that this letter will call attention to
the facts here referred to, and that before it is too
late some special inquiries w:11 be instituted, and
some stringent regulations passed, which will pre-
vent unwise management and unfair procedure
from militating against the intentions of those who
gave orders in this country for the trial to take
place; also from frustrating the desires of those
whose remonstrances called forth the command
There are some things that cannot be trifled with

the case of Sergeant -Major LILLEY is pre-eminently
one of these, and it behoves all concerned. and con-
nected with that affair, either remotely or imme-
diately, from the highest to the lowest, to take heed
to their ways ; for, if they halt in their course, or
falter in their actions, the day of reckoning may be
sooner than they expect, and the consequences more
unpalatable than they perhaps imagine. It is long
since a similar case was heard of, and never in the
recollection of the present generation has a trial
taking place in so distant a spot engaged so much
attention and excited so deep and painful an inte-
rest throughout the length and breadth of the land.
The demand for ar, inquiry was based on principles
that cannot be questioned, and to disappoint that
demand will not be right, neither will it be wise,
nor answer the purpose by enshrouding the case in
mystery.

In the midst of the proverbial selfishness of our
iron age, when the incessant pursuit of business
and the continual toil cf money-getting is too much
regarded not only as the chief, but as the one duty
of life, individual instances of the purest philan-
thropy and of the most generous- hearted benevolence
occasionally manifest themselves, as if to bear wit-
ness to the real nobility of human nature, and to put
to shame the indifference and the apathy of
the great multitude. One of these little incidents
occurred a few days back when two or three of
these unobtrusive and open-handed philanthropists
gave a very sumptuous and hospitable entertain-
ments. A feast given not in the LORD MAYOR'S
hall, not to the Prince and Princess of WALES, but
a banquet spread out on the green country-
side, in the fresh country air, for the little children
of the Ragged Schools of London ! Some
fifteen hundred and more of these children,
boys and girls and little creatures of aa ages, were
conveyed by the railway to Richmond, the heavy
expense of so large a number of passengers being
generously defrayed by one of the benevolent gen-
tlemen above alluded to. Hence the motley troop
bearing the flags of their schools through those beau-
tiful green suburban neighbourhoods. Hackney and
Spitalfields, and Spicer-street, and the most crowded
rookeries of London, marching on to Petersham-
common, where tents were erected, and a
plentiful feast provided, in the midst of thickly-
covered blackberry-brambles—a welcome sight to
the little inhabitants of the close-packed
alleys and narrow lanes of London! To many of
these children, doubtless, it was their first glimpse
of the country—their first sight of green fields and
waving trees and blackberries !

" 0 but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet I
With the sky above their head,
And the grass beneath their feet 1"

Or, in these autumnal days, the fresh
perfume of the very moss and heather !
That happy recollection they have borne away with
them to their humble homes, and the memory
will not be without its effect. The out-
lay occasioned by this little festival was
necessarily great, and many utilitarians may
coldly inquire cut bono? The answer, perhaps,
will not be within their comprehension, but many
of those who watched the varied little troops pass-
ing by in fifties and hundreds, and all so helpless,
so tender in age and in appearance, must have felt
their hearts yearn with sympathy to those urchin
groups who know so little of the sunny days of
childhood, to whom so much of the freshness. And
the jsousnesi, and, alas ! too often of the simple
innocence of that golden age is unfamiliar, and
they mast . .
have rejoiced to think that at
them.
was not
: o;etg:tas ltvvaidsasyo,ll
ceo ni
ne
arewaaly
Ttroutiechs ha
foe]
di d at yo
command which joins lathe
those who can return it to us
not to call together the true spirit of that
, when we make a festival,
rich and the proud and
again, but the blind
and the maimed and the helpless. Few, indeed, in
a moral and spiritual point of view, come so truly
within that pitiful definition as the poor little
urchins of our great metropolis. Not " brought
up, but dragged up,"as CIIARLF.S LAMB touchingly
describes it, amidst squalor and penury, and
too often amidst sin and shame, every .nfluenee that
surrounds them in that most impressionable age,
tends to train them in the way in which they should