The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

COURT-111ARTIAL AT PLYMOUTIL

The Court assembled on board the Impregnable,
in Hamoaze, on Thursday morning, when Dr. Cree
stated that Capt. Storev, ofll. . s ship Russell, the
prosecutor, was too ill to attend, but that no risk
would be incurred if the Court could be held on
board his own ship. In compliance, therefore, with
an Admiralty order it adjourned to that ship at 11

o'clock.
The prisoner, Lieptenant Hall, in his defence,
which was read by Mr. Beer, said he had hoped
that the care and attention with which the

previous Court had investigated Lindopp's case
would have afforded sufficient satisfaction for, the
ends of justice, and that the very slight assistance
he had received in carrying out the' duties of the
ship as first-lieutenant would clearly appear to the
Court. It was admitted by Capt. Storey that he
was in the habit of receiving reports from the offi-
cers of the ship, and adjudicating thereon without
consulting the next in command, and that his posi-
tion was embarrassed by the absence of Captain
Storey, who was frequently on shore, which ren-
dered it notorious that the whole duty devolved
upon him. He believed the judges acted most con-
scientiously at the previous court-martial in order-
ing him 'to be admonished ; and if lie had been
allowed time, he might have proved that that ad-
monition was not lost ; instead of which further
proceedings were immediately set on foot against
him by Capt. Storey, who denied all recollection of
the document which it was proved he had in his
possession and destroyed, and who, on the same day
on which he made a communication to Lieut. Hall,
was occupied in receiving petty officers of the ship
and hearing complaints against him. A subscription
list to aid the cost of expenses incurred by Lindopp
in his prosecution was got up, and more than one offi-
cer's name belonging to the Russell was attached to
it, which showed the state of feeling in the ship, and
the difficult situation in which the prisoner was
placed. The whole of the charges were more or less
instituted by malice, or for some private purpose.
In relation to the first charge, there was no evi-
dence to support the assertion that Michael Ken-
nedy was punished too severely ; it was evident to
the Court that the punishment was duly entered in
the defaulters' book, and that Captain Storey could
have seen it; that the prisoner was out of the ship
when the entry was made, and was therefore
neither wholly nor partly responsible for that
punishment. Captain Storey must have known
that Kennedy was in irons. The second charge
rested wholly on the statement of the master-at-
arms. There was never any intention to throw
contempt ou the captain, and all lie meant to con-
vey was that the punishment, and the way ins, which
it was carried out, was the captain's own affair, and
that his reply was of itself sufficient to show that
he did not wish to inflict heavy punishment. On
the third charge it was in distinct evidence that Lc
Maitre was not punished. How could such pro-
ceedings as the appeal to the captain produce any
other ct than to bring the author of the punish-
ment, the first-lieutenant of the ship, into abuse ?
The second allegation on the same charge rested on
the punishment for the second offence, for which
the offender himself apologised, to the prisoner on
the next morning. The punishment having been
instantly remitted accounts for the non-entry. The
third allegation was on the conversation of the
6th of September, of which no written notice was
takes, and which was not brought forward until
December, three months afterwards. The prisoner
said, " I do not care if you went to the post-cap-
tain 16 times," and did not mean to convey any
ill-nature. The manner of raising the finger would
be proved to be a habit, and was not meant to con-
vey any threatening gesture. It had been shown
that Le Maitre had not received double punish-
ment. Regarding the fourth charge, that the
punishment was not entered in the weekly report,
the prisoner thought it unnecessary as the offender
was unpunished. It had been admitted by Captain
Storey that he had looked over the book en the
13th of October, and that he did not think it ne-
cessary to call attention to these proceedings until
after the decision of the Court in December.
On the fifth charge, for behaving in an unofficerlike
manner and causing Lindopp to be punished with-
out the knowledge of Capt. Storey, and without
entering it in the defaulters' book, Lieut. Hal]
stated that it could be evidenced that he was al-
ready ordered to be admonished, and the Court was
therefore bound to allow that a competent tribunal
had already decided on the case, and that no Eng-
lishman is ever put upon his trial a second time
under such circumstances. Lindopp had been drink-
ing, and for that reason the prisoner wished him to
repeat the instructions.. The sixth charge had been
allowed by Lieut. Osborn to rest from Oct. 2eth to
Nov. 27th, and the whole matter had been in abey-
ance until after the last court-martial. The prisoner
complained of the undoubted prejudice of Lieut.
(Morn, who had, lie said, on evidence admitted

that he had contradicted him three times. When
the length of time that had elapsed was taken into
account it would be felt that less reliance should be
placed upon these statements. On the seventh
charge it would be remembered that Mr. Jones,
clerk, had volunteered his evidence on a former oc-
casion to support Lindopp, and he ventured to sug-
gest that such evidence was not much entitled to
the confidence of the court. It would be for the
court to consider how much the prisoner had at
stake, and the prejudice which appeared against
him by some officers of the ship. He should call
several witnesses to prove that his conduct had been
very different from what the prosecutors endea-
voured to make it appear. Out of all the officers of
the ship only two had come forward to complain of
oppression. From examination of the defaulters'
book it would be seen -that the ri”;sdiments had
been extremely light compared with the acts of
disobedience. Capt. Storey had scarcely ever at-
tended to the duties of the ship.
The prisoner having called witnesses to prove the
statements in his defence, testimonials in his favour -
were read from Capts. Kin come and Hutton, Royal
William ; Henry Storey, Eden ; and F. T. Brown,
Conflict, in which ships he had served.
The court was closed for half an hour, when Capt.
Storey was questioned in reference to an apparent
discrepancy in his evidence as to written or verbal
complaints from the crew.
Capt. Storey stated, when he said the complaints
of the petty officers were verbal, he referred to the
communications made to him in his cabin. This
was in examination in chief, when he was going on
to say that he took the written complaint to the
Port-Admiral, but was stopped by the court. The
letter in question was one from the ship's company,
which he next day tore up in their presence, and
told them he could attend only to complaints made
to him in a proper manner.
Late on Thursday evening the court pronounced
the following decision :—" The Ist, 2d, 4th, sth,
6th, and 7th charges have not been proved. The
four last charges have been preferred on insufficient
grounds. The court is further of opinion that the
third charge has been partly proved, and in conse-
quence cloth adjudge the prisoner to be reprimanded
and admonished to be more circanasp,Pct in- future."

MR. BRIGHT ON REFORM.

We must Fay Mr. Bright thecompliment of say-
ing that he appears in some degree to have pro-
fited by his studies on the subject of reform. To
put your ideas into a practical shape, to embody
them in the exact form in which 'you would have
them adopted by others, induces a habit of mind
which will cut down many sweeping assertions and.
retrench many extravagant exaggerations. The
men of Edinburgh 'have had the advantage of see-
ing Mr. Bright in a much more favourable frame
of mind than the men of Birmingham or Man-
chester. The alteration is so very sudden that we
may well doubt its continuance, but a great altera-
tion there undoubtedly is. Abstract principles of
enormous magnitude, founded on the rights of men.
and the immutable fitness of things, sink into
maxims of ordinary practical expediency, and.
nothing seems to be so near the heart of the orator
as to get rid of the impression which, with so much
vigour and ability, he has striven to produce.
In his Birmingham speech Mr. Bright said that
" the Reform Bill was so drawn as purposely to
exclude from the list of electors the great body of
the working classes of this country;" and in another
place, speaking of the existing allotment of seats,
he says, " The whole thing, as at present arranged
(that is, by the Reform Bill), is a disgraceful fraud,
and ought to be put an end to, and if it be not put
an end to, your representation will remain in
future, as it has been in the past, little better than
a farce." This was plain speaking, and nobody
who heard it or read it could mistake the view
which Mr. Bright entertained of the working of the
Reform Bill. But at Edinburgh he says—" What
we propose to do is to carry out a little further, if
you like a good deal further, the process which was
adopted or undertaken in the bill called the Re-
form Bill of 1832 ' " and further on he says that
" every.plan for Parliamentary Reform, be it car-
ried in 1832 by an enormous uprising of the nation,
or be it proposed by a mixed and coalition Govern-•
ment in 1854, has, and must have, precisely the
same object—it must advance upon the same lines,
and it must tend to the same destination," those
lines being, according to the Birmingham speech,
" a representation little 'better than a farce,". and.
that destination " a disgraceful fraud."
Again Mr. Bright tells us that he has never since
he wrote or spoke on the subject of Reform said a
single syllable on what are called equal electoral
districts, and rebukes Mr. Newdegate, with great
justice, for adopting an ua-democratic theory in
that respect. We must again go back to Bir-
mingham, and there we find the following pas-
sage :---" I will ask you this simple question—
what is the obvious rule with regard to this (the
allotment of members to electors) which would.
recommend itself to every man if it were put to him ?
Would he not argue in this way ?—The law has
given to certain persons the right to vote. The
law presumes that every person who has the right
to vote is capable of deciding how he should vote.
Every elector, therefore, is in the eye of the law of
the same importance as every other elector. 'Why,
then, should not every elector in voting for mem-
bers of Parliament vote for the same portion of the
same Parliament as every other elector votes for ?
I shall be told that I am not to go to the United.
States of America (where electoral districts exist)
for my illustrations." The words " equal electoral
districts" do not certainly occur in this passage,
but no one, we think, can have the slightest doubt
as to its meaning, and we cannot therefore plead
guilty to the charge of wilful. misrepresentation if
we have so represented Mr. Bright's programme.
The truth is, we suspect that this principle of elec-
toral equality is much more captivating on its the-
oretical than on its practical side, and that when
Mr. Bright came to apply his own principles to his
bill he became aware that reasons did exist, and
those of insuperable force, why we should not award
to each elector an exactly equal share with every
other elector ill returning a member to Parliament.
If so he does quite right in retracting, but not quite
so well in insisting that his December opinions are
the same with those of November, nor yet so well
in taunting us with driving about without chart or
compass because we put the obvious meaning on
expressions which he now finds it desirable to re-
pudiate. Mr. Bright has undertaken a double task
in this matter of Reform,—to instruct and to legis-
late. All we profess to de is to offer reasonable
criticisms on events as they arise, and if the needle
ranges all round the horizon, .as in Mr. Bright's
Manchester speech, points north at Birmingham
and then south at Edinburgh, it is rather hard to
represent us as having no meaning or opinions of
our own because we arc unable entirely to
.grasp
the meaning and opinions of a speaker who is evi-
dently learning his own lesson while he is affecting
to teach us ours.
The truth is, that Mr. Bright has completely
changed his ground. He set to work to reform our
institutions in November by the application of pure
abstractions without qualification or restriction to
the complex institutions of an ancient monarchy.
The suffrage was to be lowered because every man
had a right to a vote. Equal electoral districts
were to be established because every man had a
right to an equal vsice in the government. The
Reform Bill was a fraud and a farce. An hereditary
House of Peers could not exist in a free country.
Everything was abstract, clear, logical, and pre-
cise, and, like most abstract .reasoners, Mr. Bright
tortured history into the form which he had pre-
viously resolved she ought to present. His method
of treatment was eminently French ; it threw prac-
tical considerations aside, and measured everything
by a metaphysical standard. But this great effort
was not successful. Mr. Bright states, and with
great truth, that there is no single member of the
House of Lords who would support such a measure
as he proposes. This is the truth, but not the
whole truth. 'What he says of the Peerage is true
of the landed gentry and of the vast majority of the
mercantile and manufacturing classes. They seek
no violent changes, because they experience no
serious grievances which it is in the power of
legislation to redress. No man of note or mark' not
originally committed to the movement,. has been
prevailed upon to join it; and, though thousands
naturally congregate to listen to and applaud an
orator of Mr. Bright's undoubted powers, the pro-
cess of conversion seems to be to the last degree
slow and laborious. Very wisely, therefore, Mr.
Bright has discarded his abstract arguments, and
is anxious to build upon something I more solid
than the rights of man. He has recovered some
respect for the revolution of 1688, is reconciled to
the Reform Bill of 1832, and is even solicitous that
we should not give too much power to the land, lest
we should shake the stability of that venerable in-
stitution the House of Lords. Mr. Bright is -work-
ing in the same direction as ever, but the ship's
head turned. the other way. The Wind is foul,' and
he is at present reduced to tack backwards and for-
wards between the Scylla of the abstract metaphy-
sical rights on the one side and, the, charybdis of
constitutional precedents ou the other. We wish
him a safe deliverance from his unfortunate dileM-
ma, and have no doubt that when he has been able
to satisfy himself as to the principles on which a
Reform Bill should be based he will be able to ex-
plain them to the public with a clearness and con-
sistency which we have hitherto looked for in vain.
If ever he brings forward a bill it will be framed
much more upon the principles developed at Edin-
burgh than upon those set forth in his first oration
at Birmingham,.--Times.