The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-18 00:00:00

THE CRAWLEY. COURT-MARTIAL.

The court-martial cm Lieut.-Colonel Crawley waq
resumed yesterdaymornin at the Club-house.,g
Aldershot, after an adjournment of a week to enablf
the prisoner to pre pare his defence. HosveYermuct L
public iwerest may have flagged during the course
of this lengthened inquiry, the appearance of tile
court indicated that r.lo such feeling was to be evinct,d
by those who were .able to gain admission to 'Lts
precincts. Nearly ,3,tic whole of the space hithe :to
devoted to the gene ral public was appropriated to
rows of reserved sea;ts, duly numbered, which,' .)n,
before the opening ix. C the court, began to be filled by
distinguished visit( irs, together with many of acers
and ladies. Among, it those present were Lord and
Lady Chelmsford, Sir W. Hayter, Colonel M'IVI-urdo
and lady, Mr. Hetttllam, M.P., Judge Advocate-
General, Sir E. Luga rd, Sir Harry Jones, General
Brook Tiylor, Genet al Aitchinson, Colonel Scott,
Colonel Luard, Co!ona ! Kr)ox, 18th Hussars, Colonel
Bentinek, Colonel N.tpier, &c.
Oa the Court re-assembiing,

Colonel Crawley said—May I ask at this stage to
introduce to the court the letter which I 'wrote in
application to the Horse Guards for the production
of the historical memoir of the 6th Dragoons men-
tioned by Sir Hugh Rose, and also to read the reply
to my application ? The President—Certainly.
Colonei Pipon then read the letter of application
from the prisoner for the production of the memoir
in question, and the reply of the Adjutant-General,
Sir James Yorke Scarlett, informing him that the
Field-Ma.rshal Commanding-in-Chief considered
that the production of that document would be
detrimental to the public service, and was, there-
fore, unable to consent to its production.
A copy of an address delivered by Colonel
Crawley to the officers of the Inniskillings, on the
2d March, 1863, shortly after the Mhow court-
martial, and also verified extracts from the court-
martial books of the regiment, were put in as evi-
dence and attached to the proceedings. The former
inculcated good feeling amongst the officers,
declaring that two parties no longer existed
in the
regiment; and the object of the latter was to show
that a far smaller number or courts-martial took
place during the time he commanded the regiment
than in any preceding period. Having obtained
leave to postpone calling the witnesses to character
until after the conclusion of his statement,
Colonel Crawley then proceeded to reed the fol-
lowing address:—At last, Sir—at last—the hour
has arrived when I. am permitted to speak in my
ght be supposed that, for an
own defence. It might
officer who has the honour to command a regiment
second to none in her Majesty's service—it might
I say, that the day upon which
have been supposed,
such a man was arraigned as a prisoner before this
tribunal would have been to him one of bitter humi-
liation and unmixed regret. Strange, indeed, must
have been the combination of circumstances and
cruel the caprice of fortune, by which to me, who
for 30 years have faithfully served my country and
my Queen, the prospect of this trial has been that
to which alone for many a dreary month I have
been able to look forward with comfort and satisfac-
tion. I speak in the presence of men—of men of

honour and of gentlemen—who are capable of ap-

preciating that which I have had so long to endure.
To have been for months the mark of public scorn
and the object of popular execrwion ; to know that
my name had become a byword and a disgrace in
the remotest corners of that country which it was
my pride and my pleasure to serve in distant lands,
where in dangerous climates I daily perilled a life
held upon no tenure but that of England's need; to
have felt that I had been made hateful to men of my
own nation whom I had never known, and that
Englishwomen I had never seen heard my name
with horror; to have become in those English
homes whose good esteem is the great reward of
a soldier's arduous and ill-requited life a proverb
of cruelty, cowardice, meanness, and false-
hood,—to know this, and to know that it
is false, is an existence which might have
been endurable to the monster I am sup-
posed to be, but which, being what I am, has
all but crushed me beneath the overwhelming sense
of unredressed injustice. If any of those in whose
presence I now speak should ever know—which
God forbid—the bitterness of such a life, they
then understand that nothing can enah:o a mAn to

bear up under so great a load of misery but the con-
sciousness of his own innocence and the hope of a
fair trial. Up to this time I have kept silence,
though I was assailed by calumnies of the fouiest
kind, spread abroad by every artifice of unscrupu-
lous enemies, who have found others to repeat them,
either knowing that they were false, Cr, what is
little less culpable—not caring to learn whether
they were true. What answer I have had to give
I have given to my military superiors—the only
tribunal to which a soldier is accountable, or before
whom he at liberty to plead. I, for one, what-
ever I may have suffend, or whatever 1 may have
yet to suffer, have resolved not to make the disci-
pline of h er Majelty's army a topic of newspaper
recrimination. I therefore held my peace till 1 was
commandod by those who alone had the right to un-
close my tips. I have endured too much from the
efforts I have made in teaching others the lesson of
subordination to permit myself to transgress the
first duty of a soldier—that of military obedience.
How in I he dark and dreary night of calumny and
wrong have I longed for the day when the truth
mightao be legitimately known, and when the foul
v
a mi" 'rvs of malice and falsehood would dissolve like
said,o ring mist before the sun ! Punishment, it is
m." limping late behind, but, alas ! I know
by a terrible ,
Xl7netic3 that justice, too, halts upon
both its feet,
the darkest hour of calumny the
thought of this trialhas sustained and comforted me,
for with it I kn
deliverance must arrive.
I have yearned eve:, tnY
for this painful remedy, as the
man suff ?zing under
some foul corroding disease
welcomes: the knife
which isl at length to restore him
to bealt'a and to lite,
lieved that the insatiable malice sir, will it be be-
has grudged me even. bk. of my enemies
tardy but in-
evitable redress ? Can it be credited
re
England, a country proverbialcdited that in
for its love
to
been made
of fairness and for its humanity even
open and deliberate attempt should have crime, an
on the eve of a judicial investigation to d
e,te so it
prive the
prisoner cf the chances of a fair trial?
aY b
The seeds of calumny and falsehood htt
broadcast in the furrows of the press, andtha n
e
crop had fructified under the congenial itviiheZk
of credulity and spite. But none knew better than
the authors of this superstructure of mendacity how
little it was capable of bearing the test of a fair it,
vestigation. It was necessary', therefore, to the ae.,
complishment of their ends to poison, if it might be,
the fountains of justice, and to pervert, if not to in-
timidate, the tribunals which were sworn to admi-
nister the truth. I have spoken of my enemies ;
their existence will not be doubted, for their male-
volence and their activity sufficiently reveal their
presence. They are of two classes, different in the
motives which inspire their malignity, but unani-
mous in their desire to accomplish my destruction.
The first are those whom it became my painful but
paramount duty in the discharge of my military
functions to punish or reprove—men whose long
and obstinate habits of insubordination had taught
to regard with hatred those who controlled their
passions
av and punished their delinquencies. You
semi them before you ; you may judge the
spirit by which they are actuated, and the end to
'which their evidence and theirA prevarications have
bb:coanu..dsiereit is
cted. To those men my ruin is necessary,
ruin that they can re-
establish the characters
upon my
I have
anntl,cernt clads
iracters they have forfeited. But
of enemies whom you hays not
seen, but whom not
aninio the less you have heard, less
direct in their it, but far more powerful for
mischief by their abilities,
These are the self-con-
stituted social hangmen
formality
coyccute their unlovely
ogico without the
menwho,
from atrial or the sanc-
tion. of a sentence—
ea;rid,
seeram it
to h
jealous and
treois temperament of
of everythingae a a
na-
tural and incurable aversion
to everybody that is anywhere placed itsaautahno-2tthi disparage
prideag
and the safeguard e
ar
rity. Do not suppose that I intend to
or condemn the liberty of a free
press
of a free people. I speak only
of those who licentiously abuse an unlimited Dowel:
I speak of the anonymous libellers Who, like an un-
wholesome vermin, infest our social body, and, bar.

rowing into the healthy flesh, themselves create the
sores on which they feed and fatten. I do not
flatter myself that, however bitter may be their
attacks, they have thought me worthy of their per-
sonal hatred. I know that they fly at higher game
than a simple coke:lel :of dragoons. They find in
me only an incidental instrument for attacking a
system they dislike,and subverting an authority they
abhor. To that object truth is sacrificed and justice
is outraged. I am neither the first, nor shall I pro-
bably be the last victim of a system of detraction
which seeks, by the ruin of individual reputations,
to accomplish a scheme for the transfer of the con-
trol of the British army from the authority of the
Crown to a self-appointed board of anonymous
writers. For the particular individuals whom it
may be necessary to sacrifice for this object they care
as little, I know, as any secret revolutionary tri-
bunal ever did for the wretches it dismissed unheard
to the scaffold, or handed ever nneondemned to the
fury of the mob. Their end is the destruction of
military discipline, and for that object they are not
likely to stick at the ruin of personal reputations
far more considerable than mine. But, on this occa•
sion, it seems to me that their sagacity has been
inferior to their ability. They have miscalculated
the extent to which popular prejudice may be
worked upon. They have forgotten that, in the most
careless minds, the sentiment of justice and of fair
play is never wholly extinguished. When it was
known that I was to be brought to trial, even those
who had been the loudest in their cries for ven-
geance were shamed into silence. The justice they
had demanded was about to be awarded, and de-
cency required that they should at least appear to
wait in patience for judgment. Such was the
sentiment of all right-feeling men, and I desire
hero to acknowledge the sense of fairness
and justice by which, in this respect, since
my trial has been commenced, the respectably-con..
ducted portion of the English press has been distin-
guished. Bat this did not meet the views of my re-
, tentless assailants. They were loth to lose the
'vantage-ground of slander on which they had so
long triumphed unresisted. They demanded that I
should be tried in England—l suppose because the
English military administration in India is
either unwilling or unable to dispense justice. If it
be so indeed, the; sooner the Indian Empire is
abandoned the better. Or was it because they
thought that they could here more snccessfuly
bring the arts of popular intimidation to bear against
me ? Well, sir, I was to be tried in England. To me,
so long as I had a fair trial—which I knew I should
anywhere have—it signified little where the court
might sit. But the last thing my enemies were dis-
posed to tolerate was that I should have a fair trial.
They have spared no pains, they have hesitated at
no artifices, to insure my condemnation before I
could be heard. The evidence to be taken on this
trial has been forestalled—the constitution of the
court before which I was to be arraigned has been
attacked. Nay, so alarmed were they lest justice
should demand my acquittal, that they have de-
nounced by anticipation the tribunal which should
dare to absolve me. They may be—nay, they are
—gifted with great abilities ; but there are some
things they do not know, or which, in their per-
verse malignity, they cannot understand. They
might have learnt from simpler minds that there is
a point at which injustice defeats itself, and male-
volence unwillingly ministers to the cause of charity.
They have forgotten, if they ever knew, that, how-
ever much the minds of Englishmen may be warped
by prejudice or perverted by misrepresentation,
there is no criminal, however heinous, whom they
will willingly see defrauded of fair play. I pas;
from this revolting theme. It has left upon the
honour of English literature a stain which time will
with difficulty efface. It is a transaction which,
as I believe it to be without precedent,
30 I am sure it will be without imitators.
Upon the authors of such an outrage I desire
no other judgment than that which the indigna-
tion of their countrymen has already passed. As
for me, sir, I have no cause to complain of such pro-
ceedings. Nay, from the bottom of my heart I have
to thank these accusers, who have laid bare the
spirit by which they are actuated, and the profound
distrust they entertain of the merits of their cause.
To be tried was all I desired. To be fairly tried was
a right of which I knew that the malice of my ene-
mies would be impotent to deprive me. The same
reason which makes them distrust the tribunal be.
tore which I stand is that which causes me to sub-
mit myself with eagerness to its judgment. I am
an old soldier. I know courts-martial well. They
are the judges which a guilty man has most reason
to fear, and which an innocent man has most cause
to welcome. Here I know the voice of prejudice
will have no force, the influences of popular passion
and private malignity will be unfelt. A soldier
desires no better than to be tried by his peers. And
I plead, at last, with inexpressible satisfaction and
relief before a tribunal which knows by habit what
are the duties of an officer, and by instinct what are
the feelings of a gentleman. Have I not a right to
say, even at this stage of the proceedings, that the
day of my trial was to be that of my deliverance ?
Are not the very charges upon which I am arraigned
in themselves an acquittal upon the greater part ot
the odious crimes which have been laid at my door?
Let us examine precisely how this matter stands,
for an exact understanding of it is essential to my
complete vindication. An outcry has been raised
out of doors that the charges brought out against
me are too limited in their character, and that I am
not put upon my trial for the real pith and substance
ot the offences which are imputed to me. Sir, that
may or may not be true. I am not the author of
F the imputations, nor am I the framer of the charges.
If they are too limited, that is my misfortune ; it is
certainly not my fault. I have respectfully requested
—I have entreated—l have supplicated that those
charges should be enlarged, in order that the whole
of the matters of which I have been accused should
be put in issue, and that so I might be allowed to
prove in evidence, and put on record, the complete
and satisfactory answer to them all with which I am
prepared. That request has been denied me. It is
not for me to complain of that denial. I am bound
to believe that it is done upon good and sufficient rea-
sons, and I bow with submission to that authority
to which I owe implicit obedience. But, if I am
refused the supreme satisfaction of meeting face to
face my accusers upon the thousand falsehoods which
calumny has heaped upon my head, at least no right-
thinking, no just-judging man will deny me the
benefit of that complete exculpation which such a
refusal carries with it. It has happened to but few
men on this side the grave to have had their conduct
and character canvassed as mine has been, with every
disposition to lay bare and tomagnify its delinquen-
cies and its shortcomings. Every act of my life,
suety word I have spoken, has been ransacked and
Doted
has davyn. Nay, the expression of my countenance
been criticised, and the secret motives of my
inmost heart have been interpreted. When, then, I
was put oe my
ot trial, I had a right to demand that
the whole
character and conduct should be
investigated, itaj
but
that if I am guilty I should be
justly condemnednt if I am innocent I should be
completely absolved,
my trial that they
the
is so obviously just, that
I no one will imputeto authorities by whom I am
tpeunt
could have refused to lie-
toonso reasonable a re—
They have had my
uc
details • they have
heard the charges against
condt before them in 1:t
reritt' s
-c; the have
.7 heard also
the explanations to offer•
Some things they
have thought required that further . . .
' I had
4 investigation
which this court is now conducting, Upon all the
rest which is not before you they have been
pletely satisfied that they did not think • so com-
it right to
further answer, 0,
call upon me for any even to
•
opportunity of e, .
yield to my urgency for an
justification. A
ivatification. A
any further or more public time
who under such circumstances stands upon his pews
trial has a right to say to his accusers, `` Speak now
or hereafter for ever hold your peace." He ha;.
th what you
a right to say, " Charge me with
please, charge me with what you can ; but, in the
name of common justice and common honesty, do
not keep in reserve charges which you will not ad-
vance so that I may meet them, and which you will
not retract so that I may have the advantage of
their withdrawal." Before, then, I proceed to re-
ply • to the specific charges upon which I am
arraigned, I am sr.re that the Court will not deny
nee the late but solid satisfaction of registering the
aeqeittal which may be considered as already

affirmed upon all the points on which I am not now
called in question. The Court may be assured that
I am not going into any detail upon matters which
are not immediately before them. Nevertheless, in
common justice to a man who has been so griev-
ously assailed, they will permit me to note a few of
the offences of which I have been publicly accused,
but of which by the very terms of this indictment
I am now tacitly pronounced not guilty. In the first
place, I have been accused of harsh language, over-
bearing conduct, and improper demeanour towards
the officers and non-commissioned officers under my
of
st
atayhr eyl smoe
uri vsgdihce
temie
talonf
nht
nhari
have
ea hnbadedelnbeen true
command, tending to the disquiet of my regiment
chargedo
m i g h t
ali tawwdi altlshveae ihnnitiguuhrreyint
with it. Why am I not charged with it ? Have I
not a right to conclude—have I not a right to de.
mend that others shall conclude—that upon due
investigation those who have brought use to trial
upon other matters found that there was no sort of
foundation for these accusations ? Again, I have
been accused of base, malicious, mean, false, and
tyrannical behaviour in the matter of the Mhow
court-martial.' Is that true ? If it is, why am I
not charged with it now, in order that, if I am
guilty, I may be punished, but if I am innocent, I
may be absolved ? Sir, 1 say there is, and there
can be, no other possible reason why I am not
allowed to answer such a charge, except it be
that those whose business it has been to call me
to an account have satisfied themselves that
there is no ground for the imputation. It
has been said that in the Mhow court-mar-
tial I was guilty of persecution of the grossest cha
racter, that I perverted justice; that I intimidated
witnesses ; that I suborned evidence. Are such
things, if they be true, not grave offences for which
an officer ought to be tried, if there were even a
primci facie case of suspicion against him ? Are they
not heinous crimes, if they were true ? Are they
not malignant libels, if they be false ? In either
case, ought a man in my position not to be either
charged with them at once or acquitted of them
altogether? And now I am come to the accusations
which have been levelled against me—viz., the mat-
ter of the imprisonment of the three sergeant-
majors ; and even here I may be permitted again to
claim my acquittal on the substantial matter of
which I have been publicly accused. It has been
said and repeated, till I may say it has been univer-
sally believed, that I wickedly, cruelly, and unjustly
caused three nnoffending and deserving non-com-
missioned officers to be imprisoned without evidence
and without justification. Have I done so? Is
this, then, no offence ? It is said to be an act directly
and flagrantly in contravention of the Articles of
War. Then, why am I not charged with it, in order
that I may be either condemned or acquitted of so
grievous an offence ? Mark ! there were three
sergeant-majors
arrested—placed in close arrest—
in an arrestof a precisely similar kind; all upon
the same evidence and for the same reasons. IV ith
respect to two of them my conduct is not questioned
in these charges. With respect to the third, the
propriety of his arrest is not contraverted. It is to
me a matter of deep regret that the authorities who
have framed these charges have not been able to
find even such a prima facie case for calling in ques-
tion this transaction as would permit me to explain
and to justify it. From the shape which these
charges have taken I am precluded from tender-
ing evidence on the matter. I wish to God I
could. I would then undertake to satisfy you
why it was that General Farrell ordered that
arrest, why Sir W. Mansfield confirmed, and
why Sir Hugh Rose approved it ; why the Judge-
Advocate-General of India pronounced it altogether
unimpeachable ; and why, now, after the matter has
been sifted to the bottom, the highest military
authorities, by not calling me or any one else in
question for it, have given it their final sanction.
Sir, it is enough for me that those who do know the
facts, and the necessity from which the apparent
severity of the act arose. are satisfied of its justice
and propriety. Those who, not knowing the facts,
choose, in the face of such authority, to condemn
me, are persons whose judgment I can afford to
despise. Nor let it be supposed, for one single in-
stant, that in this matter I am base or cowardly
enough to seek shelter myself under the cover of
superior orders. I am proud of the approval of
those distinguished officers, but I do not wish to
decline one tittle of my share of the respon-
sibility for an act which was mine no less than
theirs. It is true I could not have done otherwise
if I would. Bat it is equally true I would not have
done otherwise if I could. lam prepared, if I were
only perpitted to do so, to justify my acts, as my
superiors I know are persistent in the assertion of
their approval ; but when I am charged with per.
sonal vindictiveness and individual malice against
these sergeants, I have a right to rely on the autho-
rity of officers who are beyond the reach of such
imputations. If I owed a grudge to Sergeant-
Major Lilley, did General Farrell, did Sir W. Mans
field, did Sir Hugh Rose share so wicked and despi-
cable a sentiment ? If I was harsh, tyrannical,
Ippressive, in my conduct towards those sergeants,
do these epithets apply to the commander of the
if how division, to the commander of the army of
the Presidency of Bombay, or the commander-in-
, chief of the army of India ? If so, why have they
not been suspended from their posts ? Why are
they not at this moment standing at the bar of this
tribunal? But if officers such as these were capable,
upon precisely the same evidence, and for exactly
the same reasons, of arriving at the conclusion that
the course which I adopted was justifiable and
right, I think I have some reason to claim that
those who are not acquainted with the facts of
the case should, in candour, allow that my act does
not deserve to be condemned. It is impossible for
ms to vouch the sanction of these great names with-
out paying to them the public tribute of my grati-
tude and admiration. It is in the hour of danger,
and the crisis of misfortune, that a subordinate
officer who has dared to do hie duty learns to value
and esteem the superiors on whom he can rely. No
man who has had the honour to serve under Sir
Hugh Rose or Sir W. Mansfield can say that they
ever betrayed him. Fortunate, sir, are the officers
who have the honour to serve under such chiefs,
and fatal will be the day when theßritish army has
to look to any other source for judgment on its acts
than the censure or approval of its military supe-
Fatal indeed will be the result when officers
serving the Queen in distant lands shall have to
look, not to their own conscience of right—not to
their own sense of duty—not to the orders of those
under whose authority they are placed—but to the
ephemeral ideas of what is falsely called public
opinion, but which, in fact, is nothing more than
the ignorant judgment of ill-informed and irrespon-
sible writers, by whose denunciations or applause
their fortune or their disgrace is to be decided.
Then, air, no man in authority will dare to do his
duty, for he will feel that he is at the mercy of in-
terested calumniators, setting in motion the treache-
rous engines of anonymous slander. There is no
fear that under such men as Sir H. Rose and Sir
W. Mansfield such a system should be inaugurated.
They know well what is necessary to the discipline
of the English army and to the maintenance of the
Indian Empire. They know that the dominions of
the Queen in Hindostan are held by a military
tenure, and that the basis of that military tenure is
military discipline. They have seen one mutiny, and
they have quelled it. They know not of what begin-
nings that dire cataclasm burst forth. They know
how the dykes of discipline were broken down,
and the flood of mutiny overwhelmed us un-
awares. It began by pampering the insubordi-
nation of non-commissioned officers, and it ended
in those scenes of dread and horror which are
commemorated on the stones which cover the wall
of Cawnpore. Men who have witnessed such a
calamity are not likely to be careless of the symp-
toms which herald another. Those who have charge
t
dai
[l.P:zee:. niTahgeayz
knowinedo
thatnot ilook u
such
t as
apeaar
akns
first signs of
with b'ooc-ty
wswmoerluridettieienmrrysse afmsruoamrye
eiblrtelittei
:lints
sei earlywth
severity is the truest mercy, and they
. punish the
insubordination with strictness in
order that they may
not finally to suppress
bloodshed. Close arrest may be a se-
soldiers than blowing your
of Ignorant
Mansfield and
re tiwhr re eos
self-samepeo nsi b e
know
thaacttsthnaiseed calumniate
r
their policy—but. we
against the severity

riors.