The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-08 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1849,

Courts-martial both naval and military—are
doomed. Whatever the authorities may dream of in
regard to the perpetuation of a system already de-
cayed to very rottenness—whatever may be the san-
guine views entertained upon this subject, either at
the Horse Guards or at the Admiralty—the assertion
is not the less emphatically true that both naval and
military courts-martial are doomed. We know well
enough the supercilious feelings with which an assu-
rance of this character will be regarded by a class so
long invested with almost irresponsible authority.
We know how the mere pronunciamento of a man of
the pen is considered by the man of the sword—gene-
rally, or, at least, apparently. Yet, in spite of this
we reiterate with implicit confidence our warning to
the high and mighty personages at the Horse Guards
and the Admiralty. We speak thus as journalists,
as an organ of public opinion, and we speak without
the shadow of a reservation, from our knowledge of
the unconquerable and irresistible force of that same
public opinion of which we are the exponents. Pre-
sidents of naval and military tribunals may shrug
their shoulders with an expression of scorn-
ful incredulity, but such is the doom of their
unnatural and abused supremacy—Lieutenant-
Colonels, Deputy Judge-Advocates, Post-Captains,
and Admirals of the Red, White, and Blue to the
contrary nevertheless notwithstanding. After such
examples of glaring and gigantic injustice as those
afforded by the court-martial, at Guernsey, on
Captain DOUGLAS, and by the court-martial, at
Plymouth, on Lieutenant GRARAM, the destruction
of those absurd hut cruel tribunals has become a
matter not only of necessity, but of absolute cer-
tainty. England will no longer consent to witness
the degradation of her national character through
the medium of a system rather suited to the feudal
ages than to the middle of this century of enlighten.
ment. England will no longer submit to the con-
tinuance of this blot on her escutcheon. Everything,
indeed, of late has served to indicate that the people
of this great country revolt at the least vestige of
those obsolete formulas, the remnants of which are
still adhering t our institutions. Whereas formerly
soldiers were not unaccustomed to receive so many
hundred lashes at the triangle—when the thongs were
again brought into play, not very many
months back at Hounslow, the whole land
shook with execrations. Again, it is yet
warm within our recollection how the fanaticism
of a clergyman, as evinced towards a poor wretch under
sentence of execution excited the loathing and indig-
nation of the whole community—although our an-
cestora regarded an auto.da fe with less inconvenience
to their nervous system than was caused to ourselves
and our contemporaries the other day, by hearing of
the blister raised on the palm of an unfortunate
murderess's hand by the flame of a tallow candle.
Ths truth is, civilrz stion has done its benign work
with the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The
English people abhor the semblance of injustice, and
are exquisitely intolerant of cruelty. They will per-
mit the existence of neither the one nor the other in
any one of the classes of the population ; much less
will they submit to its continuance in the administra-
tion of cur two glorious and noble services. For
although civilians, the people of Great Britain are
sensitive to a degree as to the honour of those illus-
trious professions. Nor will they behold the
degeneration of the British army or the
British navy in this manner with indifference,
even though the sticklers for the retention
of the old system of brutality be led on by his Grace
the Duke of WELLINGTON. Very fortunately for the

country the judgment of the Duke of WELLINGTON
h anything rather than infallible. Otherwise we
should have little chance of social, political, religious,

or constitutional reform. His Grace with his pro-

verbial stubbornness may cling to the old prerogatives
of courts-martial and the like, as though they were
the most lalred of all sacred institutions, but in
defiance of his opposition down those preposterous
and insufferable institutions will come, leaving behind
them a memory more contemptible but quite as odioui
as those of the Council of Ten, and the Star Chamber,
and the Ecclesiastical Commission, and the Spanish
Inquisition. For Public Opinion is somewhat stronger
than the Duke of WELursoTors, aye, than one hun-
dred thousand Dukes of WELLINGTON.
Reading the particulars of the court-martial held
on Captain DOUGLAS at Guernsey, we are reminded
only of the crass and egi:egious stupidity of another

quite as rational tribunal, namely, that of Goodman

isonnsitur and his brother•dolt Master Constable.
VERGES. Rea..ling on the other hand the details of

the court•martial held on Lieutenant GRAHAM, and

subsequently on Commander PITMAN, we fancy our-
. . .

selves perusing the records of the British navy—not

as it exists now, but as it was in the days of TOBIAS
SiefOLLETT. That so much brutality could be perpe-
trated on board one of the war vessels of her Majesty
Queen VICTORIA, is almcst beyond the limits of cre-
dibility. Here is an officer commanding one of the

Iships of the SOVEREIGN of Great Britain treating the
men subjected to his authority with such system tic
1 and almost inconceivable cruelty, that two of them
commit suicide—two others are driven mad—two others
(officers!) are goaded to the commission of the high
offence of desertion—the ship boys are scrubbed into a
. state of insensibility with scrubbing brushes—and the
crew, generally speaking, become in heart, if not in act,
mutinous ! Those who have not perused the painful
particulars conveyed in the trial of Commander
PITMAN, of her MAJESTY'S ship Childers, will pos-
sibly imagine that there must either be some
monstrous exaggeration or some eccentric typo-
graphical mistake in the foregoing para-
graph. Such unhappily is not the case : the details
are only too accurate, as may be discerned in a very
brief period by an examination of the reports of the
inquiry before the court-martial held at Plymouth.
There it will be seen that a seaman named Haw, for
stealing a few candles to burn when the nights were
dark, was subjected to such extreme punishment,
being confined for several days in the stern gratings,
during very cold and boisterous weather, that he
became insane before he was released from confine-
ment. Another unfortunate wretch was deprived of
his senses through similar treatment. A marine
named WHITE, being threatened by the Captain with
four dozen lashes, sprang in terror and shame from
the bow of the Childers and was drowned. An officer
is presumed to have been driven in like manner
to the commission of suicide. The ship boys are
ordered to have their heads scoured with the scrub-
bine. brush at a time when the thermometer is at 50,
one of them being only restored to sensibility 1
after the operation by having his head held
before the galley fire by the assistant-
! surgeon. At length the infamous ill-treatment of the
crew and officers of her MAJESTY'S ship Childers
appears to have become so unendurable, that Mr.
GRAHAM and Mr. ELLIOTT, the one lieutenant and
the other master, are driven to a state of desperation,
and desert. This is, indeed, the immediate cause of
the disclosure of these atrocities. After the unfor-
tunate officers last mentioned have been condemned
to suffer the extreme sentence inflicted upon deserters
—a sentence generally most just in itself, vindicatin3
as it does the outraged principles of submission to au-
thority, but in this case a sentence of the most gross
and intolerable injustice, seeing the merits of the
able 'and excellent young officer, Mr. GRAHAM, and
bearing in mind the extraordinary provocation to
which he and his companion in misfortune had been
subjected—every consideration, in short every detail,
every instance bearing upon the subject of courts•
martial, assures us that their period of continuance,
both in reference to the army and the navy, is
rapidly drawing to a conclusion. For this end we
shall pray, for this end we shall act, for this end we
hall argue incessantly, until a sweeping and com-
prehensive re-organization has been effected ; and we
shall do so simply out of our profound reverence for
the cause of justice, of truth, and of common
humanity.

We are given to understand that the memorial for-
warded by Captain DOUGLAS to the authorities at
the Horse Guards has been replied to in the most un-
gracious and unsatisfactory language. This circum-
stance only affords a strong corroborative argument
in favour of the ideas expressed by ourselves in the
foregoing article. We are gratified, however, to learn
that the cruel injustice with which Captain DOUGLAS
has been treated throughout these shameful proceed-
ings has so far excited the indignation of one of the
most distinguished men in the United Kingdom, that
on the opening of the next session the matter will be
formally brought under the consideration of Par-
liament.

As some powerful enemy might fall upon an un-
defended city when its gates stood open, its soldiers
were absent from their post, and its unsuspecting in-
habitants wrapt in slumber, so the cholera has fallen
upon this country. Never did the bills of mortality
present such appalling figures for a sum total. Every
day from two to three hundred are added to the ter-
rible list in London alone. Almost like the Egyp-
tian plague, when "there was not a house in which
there was not one dead," every locality, every street
furnishes victims to the pestilence, every family
mourns some friend or relative cut off, while in some
instances whole families are at once swept into the
same grave. If, however, this terrible scourge has
progressed through the length and breadth of the
land, and more especially through the metropolis like
a victorious foe, whose strength is irresistible, it must
be admitted that never was garrison less protected
than the health of the inhabitants of London—the
enemy had only to appear and his conquest was assured.
If, instead of a destructive disease, the cholera were a
healthful and beneficial boon to the community, it is
hardly possible to imagine a single means whereby its
presence might be attracted and its progress accele-
rated more than it is at present. The sanitary con-
dition of the metropolis has long been the subject of
our reiterated complaints. Now the subject can no
longer be tampered with. The long-required
remedies can no longer be deferred. It seems to be
an established principle with all in power, whether
ministers, senators, or boards of commission, to avoid
as much as possible the preventive system. No
grievance is ever remedied until it is become intoler-
able. No attempt is ever made to prevent the exist-
ance or to check the growth of crime, disease, or any
other social calamity. The well-paid guardians of
public safety fold their arms and sleep idly at their
posts till the enemy has entered the citadel. Before
they are fully roused to a sense of the dangers—before
they have taken up their arms and decided upon their
course of action, the defenceless citizens have fallen
into the power of the destroyer—the ground is strewed
with the dying and the dead, and before that enemy
can be fairly driven from the city how many more
must be sacrificed ? We do not, of course, venture to
say that if every means necessary for the preservation
of the public health were habitually made use of that
the cholera had never entered the metropolis ; but we
do say that, in all human probability, if it had entered
at all, it would only have passed by as it has passed at
other places had it not found in the condition of the
metropolis a congenial element. Let us only look at
some of the records of the registrar. Appended to the
various deaths in the various districts, we find a brief
comment on the state of the house or neighbourhood
in which they occurred. We quote a few of these
comments, almost at random :—" The houses are
densely populated, and the drainage is bad." " This
street is open but not well drained." "A filthy, dirty
place. The whole of this densely-populated and most
wretched locality has suffered very severely from the
epidemic. The principal cause appears to be bad
drainage, over-populated and poor occupants, with
small houses let in tenements." " This house consists
of a small shop with a room behind, in which lived
five adult persons in a most filthy condition. There
is neither drainage nor proper ventilation." "A
close, confined court, with a drain omitting an offen-
sive smell." "A close, ill-cleansed, crowded, and
undrained street." " A very close, crowded, and
undrained street." The medical attendant adds On
the certificate, " the state of the drainage in this house
is pestilential, and the water is in the same state."
We might fill a column with similar repetitions
"111-drained, undrained, partially drained, close,
crowded, ill-ventilated," occur in every other line of the
report, and after perusing it, after forming some idea
of the filthy streets and poisonous air of London, we
are surprised not so much that the cholera has swept
away the inhabitants of such localities as that so many
still remained there to be attacked. It is a wonder
not that people die, but that they live when the air
they breathe is poison, the water they drink little
better, and the house they inhabit thronged to re

pletion, unventilated, and uncleansed. Such is the

metropolis of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.
We turn again for corroboration to the .Registrar's

report :

"The epidemic in Church-lane, St. Giles's, is on the
decline; and it is quite certain that it arises from p. e
sanitary efforts which have been employed in cleansir.g
and whitewashing, and the feeding of the poor Irish
families who inhabit these miserable lodging-houses. In
Tower-street several fatal cases of cholera bave occurred.
The houses are densely populated and badly ventilated,
and the inhabitants complain bitterly of a sewer which
receives the blood and offal from a butcher's shop in the
street, as also the refuse from a tripe shop at the corner
of Lumber-court. It is constantly emitting the most
poisonous exhalations to the whole neighbourhood." . .
Step alley, Gravc-lane, Aldgate. Close, ill cleansed and unfavourable to health; a locality in which there' have been so many deaths from cholera within the last
month, that nothing but a re-modelling or re building of
the houses on this spot can possibly remove the baneful
effects of disease to which the crowded and dirty habits

of its inhabitants renders them a prey
Mr. Roy, tho regis, rar, states that • I was. csnjo'ntly
wils another pract:doner, in attendasce upoa all the
cites at Margaret's-row, and they were elaracterised by
their extreme severity, and from the very commence-
ment of the attack not allowirg of a ray of hope as to
their recovery, reminding me forcibly of the form of
cholera which I have formerly witnessed in India. This
Margaret's row consists of some ten or twelve cottages,
situated at the west end of Brook-green, open in front to
the common, and having neat gardens behind; they are
small and crowded, but the inhabitants are comfortable
for their position in life. The owner of them lived
amongst them in a large and commodious house; his
death from cholera was reported last week, after about
fifteen hours' illness; at that time no_ apparent cause
could be given. The first case occurred on Monday last,
at No. 7, a gardener, but he had been labouring previously
under diarrhcea, but collapse had set in before he was
visited, although it was almost immediately. About three
P.m., a girl about twelve years; here collapse had like-
wise shown itself at the very commencement, and at about
eleven P.M. the mother, who had been in attendance
upon these two cases, was likewise attacked, and b. came
immediately collapsed. But perhaps the cases at No.B,
which occurred next morning, were still more rapid,
father and child. The former worked at a bleaching
factory close by, left his house about six A.M., in good
health, had slept well, neither had been sick or purged,
nor any other premonitory symptoms, and in about an
hour is seized with all the most malignant symptoms, and
at once shows the case as hopeless. The child at home is
seized much about the same time, and dies almost as
rapidly. A minute investigation into the probable cause
of all this brings to light, that within eighty yards of
these cottages there is a most foul, filthy, and offensive
ditch, containing a large quantity of black putrid matter.
It is under the jurisdiction of the Commissioners of
Sewers, and they have recently attempted to clean it
cut, but apparently without any good effect. It is
worthy of observation that the direction of the wind on
Sunday and Monday was directly over this ditch to-
wards these houses.' "

When, to the evils consequent on this lamentable
want of free ventilation and proper drainage, we add
the fatal effects of the pestilential vapours continually
streaming from the churchyards, can we wonder if
half London is in mourning and funeral knells suc-
ceed each other with appalling celerity ? As some
mitigation to the horrors of the cholera, let us trust it
will prevent the recurrence of similar calamities. in
like manner as the famine and potato blight were the
precursors of free-trade, so perhaps the health of
London will arise from the graves of the cholera.
How many lives had been spared, and how much of
sorrow and suffering unoccasioned, had the remedies
been applied by way of prevention !