The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-06 00:00:00

CO,IIMEI:CIAL MAGAZINE.

This is the first number of a new periodical, professing
to furnish,
" First, Original Articles and selected documents referring
to commercial subjects.
" Second, Papers on the varicus branches of commercial
law, which should be familiar to all men of business.

Third, Mercantile Statistics of every description ; and
"Fourth, Commercial and Monetary Intelligence of the
kind most required by merchants and bankers, as indicative
of the prospects of trade and of the currency.
_ _

The want of such a periodical has long been felt. The
army, the navy, the professions of law, of medicine, of
the church, have each their own special magazine.
Every class of religionists has its organ—bankers, and
builders, and engineers, and artists, and railway pro-
prietors, and mechanics, have each their one or more
journals; but the great commercial hoc:y has as yet had
no magazine specially engaged in their service, open at
all times as a repository of commercial statistics ready
to do battle in behalf of the commercial portion of the
community, where necessity may require. This want
it is the object of the projectors of the present pe-
riodical to supply; and, judging from the contents of the
first number, the commercial body cannot desire a more
talented instructor, a more efficient advocate, or a mere
able organ than the Commercial Magazine. Its policy is
in strict unison with the principles of free trade, and
perhaps the most able article which has yet appeared on
the sugar question is the opening paper of this magazine.
We have also a most able article on the commercial law
of stoppage in transits, besides the monetary and trade
reports of the month, the new tariff complete, and an im-
mense mass of useful statistical information on matters
relating to trade and commerce.

THE NEW NAVY LIST and General Record of
the Services of Officers of the Royal Navy and Royal
Marines. Conducted by Joseph Allen, Esq., R.N.,
Greenwich Hospital.
Mr. Alien's New Navy List is the most complete
record of the services of our naval and marine officers
extant. The improvements introdUced into the first
number of the revised series have been perfected in the
present, and the editor proposes to extend them in his
January number, by introducing distinguishing marks
against the names of those officers who have received
medals from the Royal Humane Society, or other public
bodies, for saving the lives of their fellow creatures.

MILITARY FLOGGING.

REASONS FOR THE ENTIRE ABOLITION OF
FLOGGING AS A PUNISHMENT IN THE
ARMY AND NAVY OF GREAT BRITAIN.
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
1. Because of its uncertainty ; arising from, first, the
vastly varied bodily powers of executioners ; from, second.
the humour of commanding officers acting on the power*
of the same executioners ; from, third, the thickness or
thinness of the culprit's skin ; from, fourth, the vast
difference of nervous sensibility of the culprits ; from,
fifth, the perpetual variation of the cat from any given
standard, in despite of all precautions that can be taken
to the contrary. So that, in fact, with all these things
telling one way, you may be inflicting punishment equal
to 1,000 lashes, by the sentence 100, and vice versa.
2. Becati,c it will henceforth, as long as it exists,
tend to mutiny. For the soldiery now know that the
whole nation is against their officers in this point, and
for them. And they will surmise that if, at any time,
they insist (which is mutiny) that the sentence of flog-
ging by a court-martial be not inflicted, the nation will
stand betwixt them and the extreme of law. And where
some favourite comrade is to be punished,at the instance
of some "brutish" commanding officer, nothing is more
likely than for them to do so.
3. Because of its effects on the innocent. When strong
men faint in the " square," what must be going on among
the women and children, listening to the yells in the
barrack-room ? But suppose the culprit a husband and
father. It is nature's protest given thunder-tongued.
4. Because military and naval people are public ser-
vants, and if they please to take the public money, it
must be for doing the public will. From the fifer to the
com-mander-in-chief, their choice of the profession was
for the gratification of their own instincts, and their pay
and promotion are their wages ; f r it boots
not to call things by too fine names. They have
served the public and the public has paid them
If they wish to be continued in the public service, let
them do the public work as the public desire it should
be done, otherwise there are plenty who will. Indeed
if this law were altered in 1846, the candidates for
officership in 1847 would be a more elevated class of
men. Hundreds of our bravest and highest spirited gentry
are kept out of the army and navy by the flogging
system.
5. Because there is no tenable ground for flogging
men, in a mode illegal and held offensive to public rights
in the case of brutes. For the only thing that can be
said on the other part is this—that man being a moral,
and therefore a more responsible being than the brute,
his criminality is by so much more odious; and then by
so much more deserving of this punishment. But if you
say this, then inasmuch as the officer is a more enlight-
ened and responsible man than the private, his crimes
are so much more odious, and therefore so much more
deserving of this punishment than the private's crimes.
His drunkenness, his brawls, his duels, should be treated
with the same number of lashes, only it should be in the
public forum instead of in " the square." Fiat justitia
ruat cnlum. But if you will not apply your
moral principle to implicate the officer, you must not to
implicate the private man.
6. Because the worst men are least punished by it. This
moral aspect of the matter is a profoundly important
one. In fact, if the case for flogging be lost here, it is
lost entirely and for ever. New nothing is more un-
deniable than that the sensitive, honourable-spirited
man is crushed by it, whilst the cool and dogged vaga-
bond backs it off (as is the military phrase) with the most
consummate effrontery.
7. Because of the very offensive character it superin-
duces upon the officers, commissioned and non-commis-
sioned. The feeling of the 7th Hussars towards their ser-
goants (for of their commissioned-officers THEY dare not
speak) is to be very clearly gathered from the appeal
made to the Coroner's Court by one of the military
witnesses respecting a sergeant who was peeping in at the
door to listen to his evidence. No man of common sense
will say that the verdict of a whole regiment (for of
course all the privates feel alike) on a moral
point is likely to be an error. As to
the effect on the commissioned officers—the buffoonery of
Colonel Whyte in the inquest-room--the snarling reply
of Edward Ireland, the adjutant, about " making the
law"—and the denial by Dr. Warren of a conversation
with his patient, that no powers under those of a first-
rate dramatist could so have feigned and fitted to the
facts ; these three circumstances may suffice. To those
who are not aware of the customs of the army, &c., and
of their disparaging effects in certain particulars upon
the characters of those who are otherwise gentlemen,
there is a species of offensiveness about these incidents,
that, brit for direct affirmative evidence, would go far to
render them incredible.
8. Because it is equally known, and may be judged, to
be one of the prime promoters of crime in the army.
Flog a man, and he invariably flies to drunkenness to
drown his shame and wretchedness. And this very
drunkenness again leads him into the crime he is consti-
tutione2ly prone to. But not so only ; one drunkard
makes hlf-a-dozen. This time he invites this comrade to
join him--another time, another; and the very sympathy
for him which his flogging has created leads his comrade
to consent, for it is thought unkind to refuse anything
that can be done for a man so situated. Thus, not only
the man himself is driven to desperation, but ho becomes
a fountain of infection to others.
9. Because it actually is done without in other armies;
no ill effects-to the discipline and operative faculty of
those armies following. It is a great problem for a per-
eon of common sense and direct natural motive—How
thy flogging General can have the impudence to ask his
meu to fight tile General who does not flog ? Really, it
is tivee for men to begin to judge the good and evil, and
be no longer led blindly on by others ; or hounded
against sections of their kind more advanced than
themselves.
10. Because of its direct tendency to produce fatal
disea.Se in the physical system. It is very true that a
number of army (paid) surgeons pronounce it innocu-
ous to 3 fatal extent. On the other, just as great a num-
ber of arn:Y surgeons give the directly opposite opinion.
So that if ice matter end here, a case is made out of
the doubtfulnCss of its effects ; and so of its unjustifi-
ableness. But looking further, we find the opinion of
almost the whole body of the medical and surgical pro.
fessions among civit':an.s against it. And then what a
Tory sorry spectacle Of a minority does the section of