The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-11 00:00:00

fur trmina

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1849.

The Honourable Member for West Surrey is en-
titled to the marked thanks of the community for the
motion which he last night submitted to the popular
branch of the, Legislature, " That the House should
resolve itself into a Committee to consider the public
expenditure, and the existing system of taxation,
and how far both may he revised, with a view to
relieve the industry of the country." The subject is
indeed one of the deepest interest and the most
vital importance to all classes and grades
in society. The national honour and the national
honesty are involved in the decision that may be
arrived at. The great mass of the people are entitled
to the adoption of a just and equitable system of taxa-
tion, by which every British subject should contribute
to the national exigencies in proportion to his stake
in the country—that he should pay according to the
value of the possessions which were to be protected,
and the social condition which he filled. The
enunciation of such a sentiment within
the walls of Parliament, and the well.merited cheers
elicited, afford the strongest evidence of the extraor-
dinary progress which the great questions of fiscal
and financial reform have made within the last year,
and which must ultimately lead to the triumph of
these principles and to great and comprehensive alte-
rations in the existing system.
Although clothed in a great deal of eccentricity,
there was a great deal of good, sound, practical common
sense contained in the address of the Hon. Gentleman.
He .
.stated truly that " upon this and similar questions
had. turned no mere matters of ephemeral politics, but
the stability and overthrow of every throne in Europe,
as well as the stability of our own." It was the
luxuries, the extravagance, and the oppression of the
wealthier classes, coupled with the undue burdens
unjustly imposed upon the great body of the people,
for the benefit of a privileged party, and
.the
sense of injustice thereby occasioned, that led
to almost every instance of popular resistance,
and produced the great majority of the revolutions
recorded in the pages of history ; and it mattered
little what was the nominal form of Government un-
der which these abuses were sanctioned and tolerated.
A hippy and contented people, in the enjoyment of all
the necessaries and some of the comforts of existence,
will not easily be induced to enter into conspiracies
for the purpose of producing mere speculative
changes. They will be contented to toil zealously
and indefatigably, provided that they receive
the fair rewards of industry, and that they are as-
sured that they will be permitted to enjoy their own
earnings, without being called upon to satisfy liabili•
ties that should fairly be provided for from other
sources. On the contrary, when those who are both
able and willing to work find their exertions para-
lysed, their good intentions frustrated by the over-
whelming burdens to which they are subjected ;
when, after devoting their hours to toil, leaving
scarcely sufficient time for necessary rest and re-
nt/SP . I ent, they are still unable to support their fami-
-.0 *
icaso he coarsest fare end in the most humble man•
.."--:-.-011 will require but little persuasion to induce
`i -t
.0 •
ill -...-- ons to believe that there is something radi-
t, -'4. .... ',L,!:, -ctive in the system of government, and
-;;-1-'1. lat.; ' , hey can scarcely be worse off than they are
.._ - , oment, they must be benefited by any
,‘-i.--' I.l'-'-"O'iityge that may take place. Demagogues and agi-
tators find ready converts under such circumstances.
The elements of combution exist, which a
single spark will cause to burst into flame.

The smouldering fires burn within the volcano, a
trivial cause will suffice to make the lava overflow
the crater, bearing ruin and desolation to the sur-
rounding valley. Statesmen and Ministers should
exhibit a whe forethought, and by timely concessions
and equitable enactments disarm the popular resent-
ment, and avert the destruction that must inevitably
result from a continual sense of protracted injustice.
Under the present system of indirect imposts the
greater portion of the national revenues are levied
upon the earnings of the industrious classes, and the
prices of almost all fee necessaries and comforts
of existence are enormously enhanced to the con-
sumer, while those very consumers obtain less em-
ployment, and lower wages, from the pressure
thereby obtained—and " from the great reductions
in the profit of capital and labour, and from the
diminished consumption caused by the excessive
pressure of local and national taxation,"
they find themselves ground down by the
necessity of providing for the interest of
an enormous debt, contracted for the preservation
of property, and left as an outstanding mortgage on
universal posterity. The owners of the property that
was than protected should have paid the salvage
money, and not have transferred the charge to others
upon whom they had no claim whets( ever. As Mr.
RIGBY \\rASON remarked in the " Budget for the
Million"—" It is discreditably dishonest in the
owners of realised property not to pay off the National
Debt;" and Mr. DRUMMOND takes the same view.
He does not propose its immediate liquidation, but he
desires that steps should be taken for its gradual re-
duction, until we may at length witness its total ex-
tinction. He would empower the Government to
buy up the public annuities as they may be offered
in the market, and he would raise the sum required
for the purpose partly by a tax on property and
partly by an equalization of the land-tax.
These are fair and equitable views, deserving of
mature and attentive consideration—they are the
views of a man of honour and integrity, anxious to
act justly towards his neighbour, to do unto others
as he would desire to be done by. Although we
may not coincide with all the views of Mr. DnuM
MOND, yet those views might be modified in the in
quirt' that he asked for—an ir quiry which was,
however, rejected by a majority of 51, there being
151 against the motion, and 100 for it. Let Mr.
DRUM3IOND, however, not be discouraged—let him
persevere in the straightforward and upright course
on which he has entered, and he will eventually be
rewarded by the triumph of his princip'.es and the
hanks and admiration of a grateful people.

Nothing can possibly tend more to degenerate the
character of a nation like England than occurrences
conducing in_ any degree to the diminution of that
exquisite sense of hcncur hich, as the last vestige of
chivalry, is as essential to the well-being of our dis-
tinguished Services, both Naval and Military, as the
qualities of valour or the principles of patriotism.
If we would preserve our glorious elevation among
the kingdoms and principalities of the world we must
guard, as the Athenians guarded their bronze
palladium, or as the Romans guarded their golden
ancille, that sensitive appreciation of rectitude which
is the very vitality of the British forces, land and
maritime. It is, in consequence, peculiarly
incumbent upon the administrative authori-
ties, whether at the Horse Guards or at the
Admiralty, to pause upon all occasions which may
seem at the " first blush " to require an investigation
as to the personal integrity of the leaders of our sea-
men and soldiers—to pause at least until a mature
examination of the charges shall have justified those
authorities in instituting further inquiries. If ever
caution is requisite, it is requisite in the preliminary
steps leading to a court martial. It ever circum-
spection is demanded by justice, it is demanded in
favour of officers accused of some dereliction of the
rules of truthfulness. For while such accusations
are the most easily made, they are liable
in a thousand instances to be employed
as the furtive weapons of animosity. Any
officer, every officer, is open at any moment to find
himself charged with this verbal culpability—exactly
as any one crossing either of the parks of London
after nightfall runs the hazard of becoming the inno-
cent victim of the most infamous and ruffianly impu
tations. It is perfectly manifest, therefore, that
such charges, unless substantiated by the most con-
clusive evidence, and received from the most credible
witnesses, should, in obedience to the sacred demands
of justice, be scrutinized with the utmost scrupulosity
before being accepted as sufficient reason for the
holding of a court-martial. One second's reflection
will bring the necessity of this precaution " home"
to every intelligent mind, to every mind capable of
understanding the feelings of a high-souled man
placed wrongfully in this invidious situation. Espe-
cially when to such an one the chance of finding a
blur publicly imprinted upon the purity of his
honour, is an infinitely more terrible risk than that
of being proclaimed guilty of a fault, which, to
others, might appear more heinous. To accuse an
officer of being a liar would, we are satisfied, in
nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every
thousand, be immeasurably more terrible than to
accuse him of being a thief or a coward. Besides,
as a conclusive and altogether unanswerable argument
in favour of the employment of the most
punctilious precaution before such insinuations
should be made the subject of a public court-
martial, it should be remembered that even if
acquitted in the most complete and emphatic manner,
even if acquitted in the language of panegyric, the
injury inflicted upon the accused by the bare accept-
ance of the accusation at head quarters, and by its
subsequent publication, is wholly and entirely irrepa-
rable. The charge once officially acknowledged at
the Horse Guards or at the Admiralty, the accused
once subjected to the adjudication of a court-
martial, he is deprived of all future chance
of compensation. For, although the sentence
of his acquittal would be printed in the
public journals, hundreds might read the charge
without ever even hearing of the acquittal ; although
that exculpative decision would be perused in the pre-
sence of every regiment.in the United Kingdom, and
in the British Colonies, the recollection of the trial
would, in spite of its favourable termination, attach
itself with a baneful pertinacity to the object of the
accusation. Years afterwards his name could not
be mentioned in a mess-room without the possibility
of some one exclaiming—" So-AND-So ! 0, the
man who was tried for tilling a lie down at such-a-
place 1" Declared, after a rigid examination, to
be spotless in character, the unfortunate victim
of enmity would still find his reputation
slurred by the infecting touch of slander. Against
the possibility of inflicting such indelible and irrepa-
rable injuries it is the solemn duty of our adminis-
trators to guard ; and, to do this effectually, it is
' most incumbent upon them to abstain from anything
I like a precipitate acceptance of charges, and especially,
and above all, to refrain from rashly compelling the
' object of those charges to be dragged before the
I tribunal of a court-martial. Before they take either
one step or the other, let them—we implore, in the

holy name of justice to individuals, and out of a
politic regard to the maintenance of a right feeling in
our gallant Services—Pause ! Let them pause, we
repeat, under an awful sense of the responsibility
which accompanies their high rank and their great
powers ; let them pause, and examine, in some measure
at least, into the veracity of the accusers and into the
credibility of the accusation.
These thoughts have been forced upon us very re-
cently by the perusal of a pamphlet* which has by
accident fallen into our hands, a pamphlet relating to
the proceedings of a court-martial assembled at
Guernsey on the 28th of March, and continued by
adjournments to the 12th of April. With the outline
of the trial, we doubt not, but that the majority of
our readers are familiar. it was one arising out of
certain charges preferred against Captain GEORGE
DOUGLAS, of her MAJESTY'S 16th Regiment, accusing
him of "conduct unbefitting the character of an
officer and a gentleman." And of all the painful
narrativ€s we have ever perused we may safely aver
that the account of this trial, faithfully reported from
notes taken during the inquiry, reprinted in the form
of a pamphlet, and the pamphlet itself edited by
Captain Seohlo DOUGLAS, the brother of the ac
cused, is without any question the most painful and

*76 Proceediligs of a General Court-Martia►, held at
Guernsey, on Captain George Douglas, 16th Regiment;
the Defence conducted by Samuel Warren, Esq., F.R.S.,
Barrister-at-Law. Edited by R Sholto Douglas, Esq.,
late Captain 42d Royal Ilighlander2." BTo. pp. 78.
Blackwood or Denning; London, 1849.

the most depressive. It is painful because, after a
careful consideration of the defence a defence
which we cannot but regard as having been conducted
in a masterly spirit of simplicity, candour, and
perspicuity—we behold the fact which glares
out from every chink and cranny of the
transaction, that the court-martial has been as preci-
pitate as it was cruel and causeless. We know not
one jot more of Captain GEORGE DOUGLAS, or of
Captain SHOLTO DOUGLAS, than that which any
stranger may learn of them through the medium of
this pamphlet—and yet wo know, through that
pamphlet, sufficient of them to be certain that they
are alike men of most honourable and unsullied re-
putation. We lay no stress whatever upon the cir-
cumstance that Captain GEORGE DOUGLAS is the de-
scendant of that ancient race whose historical name
he bears, neither do we take into account the many
affecting yet soldierlike testimonials to character
which were laid before Colonel TORREINS, the
President of the court-martial, and his coadjutors
we look simply to facts adduced upon the trial, and,
looking at those naked facts, apart from every other
consideration, we defy any unprejudiced mind to
:egard Captain DOUGLAS otherwise than as a man
much injured and Perfectly innocent. As the most
rapid and accurate narrative of the origin and nature
of the charges preferred against him, we would wil-
lingly make excerpts from the manly and straightfor-
ward Preface by Captain SHOLTO DOUGLAS, but that
our space, precludes us from so doing this evening.
Beyond which, the whole chain of reasoning in the
defence is so strictly sequential, that by tearing out
isolated passages we should be destroying at once the
force and symmetry of the argument.
Whatever may be the ulterior decision at the
Horse Guards, Captain DOUGLAS cannot be more
emphatically acquitted than he is, in the estimation
of every unprejudiced man, by the mere record of the
proceedings en thi3 remarkable court-martial. No
one can read that record without being powerfully

impressed with a sense that the conduct of the accused
throughout the NI hole transaction has been eminently
" becoming the character of an officer and a gentle-
man," or without sympthising with the unutterable
indignation with w hich he found his ancient name
aspersed, and his honour questioned, although that
name is to this moment untarnished and that honour
is still unimpeachable.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
The Moniteur du Soir of Wednesday published
the same telegraphic despatch relative to the position
of the army of General Oudinot, which appeared h
the official Itloniteur of • the morning, but with the
following addition
" The Neapaitans are on. thfiir march to Rome.
" Tim French army. will ,occupy the city before them.
" Nothing can give an id a of the ardour of our
troops. Our wounded to the number of 159, leave for
Bastia, ou board the Sana."

The National, in noticing this fligrant case of sup-
pression on the part of the Ministry, says that, as the
dates are the same it is evident that the Ministry had
kept back the. latter portion of the intelligence
until the discussion in the Assembly should be over.
The letter written by the PRESIDENT to General
OUDINOT still continues to create intense excitement,
and will not improbably lead to ulterior proceedings.
The frivolous excuse that the letter was merely an
impulsive outbreak of the interest which the PRESI-
DENT must always feel in the fate of the army is thus
summarily disposed of by the National:—" The news
of the events of which Rome was the theatre, arrived
here on the 3d lilay. For five days the interest
which M. Louts BONAPARTE takes in the fate of our
soldiers slumbered in the depths of his soul, and were
only avrak,i-ned on the Bth, that is to say, not until the
day after the vote of censure in the Assembly."
This expedition to Rome will be the rock upon which
the reactionaries will split. It has compelled them
to throw off the mask, and to proesim themselves to
the world as the lackeys of FERDINAND 1.30mn,t, and
of the Butcher of Milan. The French
nation must be marvellously altered of
late if it tamely suffers this disgrace.
As a proof of the state of the opinion of the public
and of the army in particular, on the subject of the
conduct of the PRESIDENT and of his Ministers in
this Roman affair, it may be mentioned that on the
sth of May two regiments who were about to be em-
barked to reinforce OUDINOT, solemnly protested
against being called on to draw their swords against
their fellow republicans of Rome ; and to add to the
Ministers' embarrassment., the I'orE protests against
French interference in the affairs of the Church, and
refuses to owe his restoration to any foreign Power,
lest he should become the mere tool of such Power so
restoring him.
_ _

The government have also been defeated in an at-
tempted coup d'etat against the National Assembly.
It appears that the intention was, on the 29th January,
to get up a pretended emeute, in order to have an ex-
cuse for declaring a state of siege and expelling the
Assembly at the point of the bayonet, and this time
care had been taken by the judicious distribution of
agens provocative who would have themselves com-
menced the emeute to provide far General CHANGAR•
NIEE a sufficient excuse for ordering on the troops to
act, but the troops could not be depended
on, and so the whole plot failed.
The Reforme says—
"On Tuesday morning the commanders of the diffe-
rent corps composing the garrison of Paris were con-
voked by General Changarnier, and the question was
mooted, how far the army could bo depended upon on
the pretended hypothesis of a Socialist movement taking
place? It appears that the report of the different com-
manders were not quite reassuring. It was concluded
that the National Guard could be better depended upon
than the soldiery. If such be the opinion of General
Changarnier he is mistaken. The National Guard and
the army are alike determined upon maintaining the
Republic and the Constitution against the attacks of the
El) see Bourbon, or any other attacks."
The Ministry has determined to form an army of
observation on the frontier of the Rbine.
Sergeant BOICHET, who was arrested andlimprisoned
at Vincennes by order of General CHANGARNIER,
because he had been announced as a candidate for
the department of the Seine, Ras interrogated on
Saturday, when an offer was made to him, on the
part of the Minister of War, of a commission as
officer if he would resign his candidateship. The
sergeant replied, that if he were made a colonel he
would resign the honour of being a candidate for a
seat in the Assembly.
Letters from Lyons of the 7th speak of the further
movement of troops to the south. The 2d, 19th,
3241, 48th, 53d, and 74th regiments of the line had
left that city for the southern departments.
Letters from Marseilles of the 6th state that the
steam-frigates Christophe Colon, and Orenoque had
sailed on that morning, with 2,000 troops on board,
for Civita Vecchia.
BOURSE. —PARis, Thu n SDAY, MAY 10.
THREE o'CLccx.—The Funds have been firm to-day,
but without any remarkable alteration since yesterday.
Railway Shares were weak, and the fall that commenced
yesterday made further progress, especially on the heavy
lines. Exchange on London (30 days), 25 30; ditto (90
days), 25 17f.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE, MAY 10.
Boulogne and Amiens, 6%—Northern of France, 10M—
Central of France (Orleans and Vierzon), 13%—Orleans
and Bordeaux, 3—Paris anti Rouen, 2114—Paris and Stras-
bourg, 4%--Rouen and Havre, 10—Tours amd Nantes,
3 4
Paris and Orleans, 31.