The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-24 00:00:00

CR* Ina --7- Ant

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1849.

All classes within the dominions of her Britannic
MAJESTY, with two extraordinary exceptions, have some
direct court of appeal to which they may submit their
individual grievances with the reasonable expectation
of having an extravagant punishment mitigated or an
unjust sentence reconsidered. These two exceptions,
`wonderful to relate, are the members of the naval and
military professions. According to the existing system
the finding of a naval or military Court-Martial is to
be considered altogether ultimate and irrevocable.
However glaring may be the cruelty of its decision;
although the whole country may ring with the
voice of indignation ; though the organs of
every party or of every phase of public opinion may
coincide in pronouncing the decision of the court to
be atrociously harsh and undeserved—that decision
must, nevertheless, be regarded as final, and
its victim must submit from sheer despair to all its
evil consequences. Every effort to demand a revision
of the sentence is treated as an infringement upon
naval or military discipline ; and supposing any one
to have sufficient temerity to forward a " Memorial
to the " most reverend, grave, and potent seigniors '
at the Horse Guards or the Admiralty, ten million
chances to one but what the document is returned
unperused, with a note of the most polite tenor
but of the most insolent brevity. Hence there
remains not the faintest possibility of com-
pensation, unless the journalist proclaims the
necessity for a revision through the medium of
the Press, or the legislator forces that
revision upon the authorities by an ex-
posure of the abuse in Parliament. So
far as this responsibility for exertion reposes with
ourselves, we have endeavoured, and shall unceasingly
endeavour, to agitate for a change in the present
organization of Courts-Martial; and, thanks to those
principles of justice which penetrate everywhere
throughout the conamuni-y-, there is every prospect
of the matter being brought, shortly after the open-
ing of the next session, under the consideration of
the Imperial Legislature. Out of the misfortunes of
individuals will arise in this, as in so many preceding
instances, :the general advantage. So far we are
sanguine as to the beneficent result of the present
movement. Our anxiety as to the ulterior
removal of the enormous evil now pressing so
heavily upon our two heroic professions has
almost entirely been dissipated. What, in that
particular, continues to be the sole object of our soli-
citude is the uncertainty whether, in the prevention
of future injustice, the rectification of past injustice
may be overlooked—that in the destruction of a
general system, so far as it affects large classes of the
population, our national defenders, both land and
maritime, the administration of solace to the victims
of that system may be regarded as unnecessary and
superfluous.

Supposing the present system of Courts-Martial
to be destroyed—as destroyed it inevitably will be
by those triple vindicators of justice, the People, the
Press, and the Parliament—its downfal at this
particular period will be attributable to the
indignation excites] by the wrongs endured by Captain
DOUGLAS, late of the 16th Regiment, and by Lieute-
nant GRAHAM, late of 11. M. S. Childers. But for
the monstrous sentences pronounced upon those offi-
cers, one by a naval Court-Martial, the other by a
military Court-Martial, the preposterous evils of the
code regulating, these arbitrary and almost irre-
sponsible tribunals might have remained for yet a con-
siderable time longer unobserved and consequently
unassailed. Fortunately, however, for their gallant
professions, but most unfortunately for themselves,
these gentlemen have fallen under a despotic and in-
competent authority, which, as at pre-
sent organized, should long since have
been obsolete. In referring, however, simultaneously
to the case of Captain DOUGLAS and Lieutenant GRA-
HAM, it must be remembered that we do not thereby
wish it to be understood that we regard the absence
of culpability is both instances as equivalent. For,
NOLile it is indisputable that the late Lieutenant of the
'Childers was guilty of the high crime of desertion
(a desertion, the heinousness of which was no doubt
materially diminished by the desperation to which he
had been driven by his tyrannical Commannder), the
charge laid against the late Captain in the 16th Regi-

meat was not less contemptible and frivolous

in its character than it

was glaringly

false as an accusation. We refer simultaneously

to the two cases, therefore, not because we recognise
any parity in the complete innocence of the accused,
but because we regard both as instances of extraordi-

hary hardship—one of them showing the necessity for

reform in the nftval, the other in the military regime,

That Captain DOUGLIS should have been tried at al

upon such idle and paltry imputations, unsupported

as those imputations were by any admissible evi
dence, is to us matter of serious astonishment. But

that Lieutenant GRAHAM, having demonstrated the
accuracy of his statements as to the provocation
received from his Commander, by con-
ducing to the expulsion of that person
from the service which he had disgraced by his cruel-
ties--that Lieutenant GRAHAM, we say, having veri-
ed his assertions to the satisfaction of the Court-
Martial lately sitting at Ply mcuth, should still be
allowed to remain in the Exeter County Gaol, classed
among felons and subjected to a felon's punishment, is
to every generous heart in the community a subject of
profound indignation. The nature and tendency,
therefore, cf our solicitude in reference to Captain
DOUGLAS, to Lieutenant GRAHAM, and to the general
question of Courts -Martial, are olvious. That the

latter tribunals, a 3 they have been hitherto or:

ganized, are doomed we regard as an abco-

lute fact. They are doomed by the will
of the People, by the word of the Press, and by the
__ _

approaching deuce of the Parliament. Our solici-

tude, therefore, in that regard has become null, has
given place to a sentiment of sustaining confidence.
We are no longer solicitous upon that point, because
we view the existing system as at this moment virtually