The Sun.
London, England, 1846-07-23 00:00:00

ARMY TEACHING AND ARMY

FLOGGING.

(From Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper.)
The Government is about to raise the character of the
soldier to a high moral standard; it will teach him his
true dignity, as an immortal being; in the meanwhile, it
will flog him like a boast.
Certain Government advertisements have lately
gemmed the papers—advertisements offering fair re-
wards to schoolmasters, fitted and accomplished for the
task of teaching military scholars. The friends of edu-
cation were gladdened by the evidence of newly-
awakened liberality on the part of the Government ;
for the stipends offered to military schoolmasters
were in many cases far above valet's or butler's
wages. It was more than pleasant to discover that
the true dignity and importance of the schoolmaster were
about to be acknowledged by the State. Men who
trained minds were to be rated somewhat above men who
trained horses. The army—that melancholy mass of
ignorance, taken in the mass—was to be refined, elevated.
We were no longer to behold in so many red-coated
bipeds, in columns or hollow square, so much mere brute
power—moved and swayed, and put into attitude, and
bid to march and halt, and bite cartridge ends, and draw
the mortal trigger at command ; with no more in-
dividual will, no more self-accountability, than a
machine. The soldier might say to Perkins's steam-
gun, " Thou art my brother," for the creature of human
affections and the thing of the foundry were equally
moral agents—were equally supposed to think of the
bloody work allotted to them. But this mortal darkness
—so thought the jocund readers of the State advertise-
ments for military teachers—was to pass away. The
soldier was henceforth to be cultivated. His reason was
to be enlarged and purified ; his affections softened ; his
entire moral being elevated that he might make the
nobler hero. That he may no longer blindly, ignorantly,
do the behest of his superiors—firing and bayoneting,
according to orders, with not a thought of the deaths he
dealt ; of the streams of blood he loosed from living
bosoms—it has been proposed to educate him ;to culti-
vate his moral sense to take a proper pride in his busi-
ness. Mr. Carlyle in his " Cromwell," avers that every
soldier ought "to think himself God's soldier, killing
God's enemies ;" and to possess red-coated enthusiasts
with this most amiable delusion is probably the high
purpose of those who call aloud to the country for mili-
tary schoolmasters.
It has, however, been objected that as we educate the
soldier as a thinking, contemplative being, so shall we
risk the enfeeblement or loss of those elements that now
create armies, The very cruelty and remorselessness of
war, it has been urged, demands the coarsest agents.
" We do not make revolutions with rose water," said the
Frenchman. Battles are not to be fought by squares and
squadrons of scholars and philosophers. Teach the
soldier to think, and think rightly, and what will his
thoughts tend to as he treads his monotonous sentry-
pace ? May not some mischievous spirit—all rebellious
to the might and glory of the Horse Guards—prompt
the tool-sentinel, the man-engine, to take himself to
bits ? to sit in calm judgment upon the true beauty
of his uniform, his cuffs and facings ? To question
the ennobling utility of that iron tube, that hard,
dead piece of walnut, hugged in his arm until,
by use, it has almost become incorporated with the
man?—a part of him; a very limb? May not this book-
taught, pedagogue-lectured sentinel, be apt to analyse
the reel worth of pipe-clay —and so, be tempted to re-
nounce it 't A fear of this has arisen in the minds of
men, otherwise greatly pleased at the prospect of be-
holding in future fighting battalions, highly cultivated
beings ; elevated, polished doers of the grim behests of
bloody war.
Fear not ; be at ease, gentlemen. The Government
will rule after its own wise fashion ; after its own saga-
cious alternation. If the hero be educated, he shall still
be flogged. Arithmetics and primers, and books of re-
ligion and morality shall be familiar to the soldier as
the roll call, and so shall the cat. Though school-rooms
be furnished the halberds shall continue. The Govern-
ment, wisely inconsistent, will reserve to itself the cat-o'-
nine tails, lest education and philosophy should over-
refine its martial students.
Our paper contains an account of the last refractory
scholar, remonstrated with by the drummer. The
soldier is dead ; and as the case is still before the
Coroner, we shall return to it. The dead man com-
mitted a grave offence, he violently struck his sergeant.
Nevertheless, he should have been otherwise punished.
The infliction of the lash upon a human being degrades
not him alone who suffers, but shocks and disgusts—or
failing to do so, the mischief is still worse—all who
behold it. Imprisonment, forced labour, compelled soli-
tude, may be visited upo❑ evil• doers ; for each degree
of punishment may carry with it moral correction. But
the first lash lowers man to the beast, and his spirit is
.degraded or broken for ever.
And so the British soldier is to be carefully educated,
and duly flogged. We are to engage schoolmasters for
the army ; we are to teach the military morals and
philosophy ; but, as at the dames' schools, the urchins
are kept in awe by the exhibited rod, so in our acade-
mies for heroes, the educated, elevated warricrs, are not
to shut their eyes to the cat.

GALLANTRY.—On Friday afternoon last, as a party
of equestrians were riding near the Serpentine river in ilyee
Park, the screams of a female were heard, and upon looking
round the Hon. Augustus Berkeley saw a person in the water
struggling and sinking. The gallant captain immediately
alighted from his horse, and plunged into the river, and atter
some exertion succeeded in rescuing the female from a watery
grave. He immediately conveyed her almost lifeless form to
the station-house of the Humane Society,where every atten-
tion was paid to her, and she was in due tme restored to life.
We hear that poverty drove the unfortunate creature to the
dreadful Act.