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

TILE CRAWLEY COURT-MARTIAL.

The court-nartial on Lieut.-Colonel Crawley was
resumed yest erday. morning at the Club-house,
Aldershot, aftkn- an adjournment of a week to enable
the prisoner ..to prepare his defence. However much
public interest may have flagged during the course
of this lengthened inquiry, the appearance of the
court indicated that no such feeling was to be evinced
by those who were able to gain admission to its
precincts. Nearly' the whole of the space hitherto
devoted to the general public was appropriated to.
rows of reserved setts, duly numbered, which, long
before the opening of the court, began to be filled -oy
distinguished visitors, together with many officers
and ladies. Amongst those present were Lord and
Lady Chelms'!ord, Sir W. Hayter, Calouel AP.Murdo
and lady, Mr. Headlarn, M.P., Judge Advocate-
General, Sir E. Lugard, Sir Harry Jones, General
Brook Taylor, General Aitchinson, Colonel Scott,
Colonel Luard, !onel Knox, 18th Hussars, Colonel
Bentiock, Colonel Napier, &c.
On the Court re-ossembling,

Colonel Crawley soid—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.
Colonel 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-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief considered
that tlse 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 Meow 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 of courts-martial took
place during the time he commanded the regiment
than in any preceding period. Having obtained
leave to postpone ceiling the witnesses to character
until after the conclusion of his statement,
Colonel Crawley then proceeded to read the fol-
lowing address:—At last, Sir—at last—the hour
has arrived when I am permitted to speak in my
own defence. It might be supposed that, for an
officer who has the honour to command a regiment
second to none in her Majesty's service—it might
have been supposed, I say, that the day upon which
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 cspabie 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 execration ; 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 unredreesed injustice. If any of those in whose
presence I now speak should ever know—which
God forbid—the bitterness of such a life, they wiil
then understeed that nothing can enable a min 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. lip to this time I have kept silence,
though I was assailed by calumnies of the foulest
kind, spread abroad by every artifice of unscrupu-
lous enemies, who have found others to repeat them,
either knowing that they were false, or, 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 is at liberty to plead. I, for one, what-
ever I may have sufferad, or whatever I may have
yet to suffer, have resolved not to make the disci-
pline of her Majesty's army a topic of newspaper
recrimination. I therefore held my peace till 1 was
commanded by those who alone had the right to un-
close my lips. 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 the dark and dreary night of calumny and
/2:airnit have I longed for the day when the truth
liut be legitimately known, and when the foul
vaaPe of malice and falsehood would dissolve like
morning mist before the sun ! Punishment, it is
said, coulee limping late behind, but, alas . I know
by a terrible „
trience that justice, too, halts upon
both its feet,
thought of this 1:1,1ilael
the darkest hour of calumny the
has sustained and comforted me,
for with it I
deliverance must arrive.
I have yearned even ir
lfor this painful remedy, as the
man suffering under some foul corroding disease
welcomes the knife which is at length to restore him
to health and to life,
gut, sir, will it be be-
lieved that the insatiable
malice of my enemies
has grudged me even this tardy but in-
evitable redress ? Can it
e credited that in
tr
a country England, Proverbial r
for
its love
been
ittheto
e me' an
ad
on the eve of a judicial investigation t.O
prisoner of the chances of a fair trial? es
The seeds of calumny and falsehood had been
sown
broadcast in the furrows of the press, and the
rank
crop had fructified under the congenial iiititienn_e
of credulity and spite. But none knew better than
the authors of this superstructure of mendacity hew
little it was capable of bearing the test of a fair in.
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 t 3 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 and punished their delinquencies. You
17e seeu them before you ; you may judge the
Spirit by which they are actuated and the end to
bweheiteilatitheei,r evidence and their pre:arications have
becs.use iectied. To those men my ruin is necessary,
~n only upo my ruin that they can re-
,escaveZaLont s
e characters
class
they have forfeited. But
but
whom not
of enemies whom you have not
you have heard, less
dirscr in their arijoitotie less
animosity, but far more powerful for
mischief by their
abhangmenew.oThese are the self-con-
stituted social hangmen
who
orxaectu.te.their unlovely
cffice without the for
sanc-
tion of a eentenee—men Who, fromala
jealous or th e
andEY",V.OIS temperament of mud, Seem to have a na-
tural and incurable aversion of every thing and
to everybody
that is
I anywhere placed in autho-
rity. Do not suPP thatse intend to disparage
or condemn the liberty of a fry© Prests•—the pride
and the safeguard of a free people. 1 speak only
of those who licentiously Ibliee en unlimited power.
I speak of the anonymous libellere who, like an un-
wholesome vermin, infest c.v.' social body, and, bur-

row ing into the healthy flesh, themselves create the
sort !a on which they feed and fatten. I do not
flat ter myself that, however bitter may be their
att acke, they have thought me worthy of their per-
SO' aal hatred. I know that they fly at higher game
U lan a simple colonel
,cf dragoons. They find in
me only an incidental instrument for attacking a
system they dislike,and subverting an authoritythey
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 uncondemned 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
fax 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 sileve. 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
here 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. But this did not meet the views of my re-
lentless 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 succesafuly
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 cennot 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 pass
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,
so 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 ail 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 of
the odious crimes which have been laid at my door?
Let us examine precisely how this matter stand,
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
of the offences which are imputed to me. Sir, that
may or may not be true. I am not the author of
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 to:magnify its delinquen-
cie, and its shortcomings. Every act of my life,
Zet?44
wil:
word I have spoken, has been ransacked and
Nay, the expression of my countenance
has beeninutotttcriticised, and the secret motives of my
heart have been interpreted. When, then, I
was put on vu .
the whole
investigated, in
justly condemned,completely abecaeed, eIY trial, I had a right to demand that
hbaurta.cter and conduct should be
cyder that if I am guilty I should be
if I am innocent I should be
1 ill impute
to
tae
is so obviously j ust, that
no one w
my trial that they authorities by whom I am
reYti:ould have refused to lis-
tenput on
further i
conduct before them in "t• They have had my
me
alis ; they have
effer.
all its a t '
to so reasonable a
required
telftoirheecoduitdhneyot think
orngse sI
;they have heard also
have been so cora-
eale things they
offering
tnhlueleavreedxtpthhloaeungcahhti:
thatahgaadintsot
investigationUponall
the
rest
endotthb
it right to
call upon me for any further answer, or even
to
any further or more public justification. A moo
yield to my urgency for an opportunity of
who under such circumstances stands upon his imbue
trial has a right to say to his accusers," Speak now,
or hereafter for ever hold your peace." He has
a right to say, " Charge me with what you
please, charge mo with what you can ; but, in the
name of common justice and common honesty, do
not keep in reserve charges which you wll 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 I
arraigned, I am sere that the Court will not deny
me the late but solid satisfaction of registering the 1
acquittal 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
command, tending to the disquiet of my regiment
and the injury of the service. If this had been true
it was a high military misdemeanour, and I might
I will venture to say I ought—to have been charged
wlth it. Why am I not charged with it ? Have I
not a right to conclude—have I not a right to de-
mand that others shall conclude—that upon due
investigation those who have brought me 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
meter, 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
prima 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 'may say it has been univer-
sally believed, that I wickedly, cruelly, and unjustly
caused three nuoffending 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-maj ors arrested—placed in close arrest—
in an arrest of a precisely similar kind; all upon
the same evidence and for the same reasons. -With
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 ie ques-
tion this transaction as would permit me to explain
and to justify it. From the shape which these
charges have taken I um 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 permitted to do so, to justify my acts, as my
superiors I know ace 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,
oppressive, in my conduct towards those sergeants,
do these epithets apply to the commander of the
!dhow 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 ease should, in candour, allow that my act does
not deserve to be condemned. It is impossible for
me 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 his 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 thee
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-
riors. 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, sir, 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 Una dire cataclasm burst forth. They know
how the dykes of discipline were broken down,
and ithe , 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
°f a Powder magazine do not look at sparks with
severity is t nee. know that in such eases an early
he
t: truestadlisbh
oenraid.eiraccayti,ioosand they punish the
orderfitu tttlhg iny wantai tthh°rebYl : may
not have finally to suppress
soldiersw.riters frommay the
criticise e guns.
their
measure, bet . arrest may mstaryi'3tbileesas se-
vereinik is better than blowing your
of Mansfield are the self-same
Ignorant and irresponsible
acts and calumniate
their policy—but We know that those who clamour
against the severity