The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 7, 1867.

so magnificent, holding most inflated ideas of his own
importance,was n otlikelyto be checked or cooled down
by the influence of his wife. The memoranda drawn
up by his Excellency for the guidance of his aides-
de-camp are fine specimens of what men may come
to when thrust suddenly and unexpectedly into a

position of high dignity and power. His Royal
Highness characterises these orders as documents
such as had never before come to his notice, in the

propriety of which he is unable to concur, and as
involving duties which could in no way increase the
measure of any officer's liability to military criminal
law. It is a well known fact that those who exer-

cise with the greatest severity the official power with
which they may be clothed, who exact the most
rigid and unhesitating obedience, are often the first to

question and rebel against the commands of their
own superiors. Sir WILLIAM MANSFIELD has been
proved to have brought on the army a deplorable
scandal. He has been shown to have acted through-
out with an amazing want of judgment—he has

driven an officer to ruin, by trumping up false charges
fatal to that officer's honour, and ming the intem-

perance he had thus excited in the man he disliked
to blight all his prospects—thenurging as a full justi-
fication for himself the repeated, prolonged, violent
insubordination of the gentlemen thus accused as
the most conclusive reason for destroying him.
Yet when his Royal Highness, SirWILLIAM'S superior,
comments on the case, showing in clear language
the errors of own course (which are patent to all
England), he does not hesitate to reply in a style of
thinly disguised contempt for the opinions of his
own commander. There is something grossly ab-
surd in what Sir WILLIAM MANSFIELD alleges as
being his conviction of the course proper for him to
adopt. He says :—" MY view has been that it was
for the Commander-in-Chief simply to elevate him-
self above the whole matter, as if he were not a
party concerned." Either the infatuation• or the
hypocrisy of this is beyond the comprehension of
ordinary minds. Here is a man who has pursued
with a rancour that imperilled a splendid position,
and what might have been a great career, to gratify
the most paltry spite, talking of achieving the most
difficult accomplishment of the calmest and greatest
judicial mind. If Captain JERVIS had given his
Excellency tough mutton and indigestible pickles,
he is very properly punished, for only tough mutton
and indigestible pickles, aided by a long residence
in India, could have so lowered the mental calibre
of the Indian Commander-in-Chief as to betray
insisted
and
eaodi saidrtehoenr
means
dee
staont
rstohybeiynl.ogwo boy
ohwr oTu,vr
juveniles
ce rbsaewcekaoeurrrssye,
him into so gross a scandal. What would Sir
Wtdi
ongpLsol:
by such worry the brute had been driven to
obniteth?e doubtbiNteoasthe e then el u s
ibvoey r
ewa
soounl d
for h at vh ee
execu-
tion, ewceul
t
tion, and dogs that do bite ought to be destroyed ;
but then all dogs will bite under certain circum-
stances. It is quite evident from Sir WILLIAM'S
answer to 11.R.11 that the Duke couli very easily
have extracted a bite from him. Had the English
Commander-in-Chief written in plain terms his
opinion of Sir WILLIAM MANSFIELD he would have
probably stung that officer to the quick, and he
would probably have taken a " JERVIS" mode of
expressing his dissatisfaction. But Sir WILLIAM'S
insubordination would have assumed in his eyes quite
a different aspect. It would then be the high spirit
of an English gentleman resenting an unmerited
insult. We would have heard nothing of the in-
subordination of private soldiers never being over-
looked, and a different law for them and for the
officers. It is also an extraordinary fact that a clever
man, such as is General MANSFIELD, should put for-
ward the opinions of the officers by, whom he was
surrounded, such as the Judge-Advocate-General,
the Adjutant-General, and the Deputy-Adjutant-
General. He must have known what all men
know, that these gentlemen merely reflect the
opinions of the Commander-in-Chief, where
they have no great interest in the result,
but where the Chief's feelings are deeply in-
terested. We are all aware what the evidence was of
a Deputy-Judge-Advocate-General, who, on his
oath in the Supreme Court of Calcutta, stated that
he had no opinions of his own apart from the Com-
mander-in-Chief, at whose breath he lived ! hat
then can be the use of bringing forward such testi-
mony in support of his case? Had he been influenced
by the exalted sentiments to which he pretends, he
would have resigned on receipt of the Duke's de-
spatch. The words of the English Judge-Advocate-
General were quoted by the Duke with his entire
concurrence that the Court-martial censured by
General MANSFIELD had performed their difficult
functions with marked impartiality and sound judg-
ment, and Sir WILLIAM is directed, as an act of
pe hopeles. may prove an
But there is a moral, and there is an end to this
justice to the officers composing it, to make known
this opinion to them. This pleasant pill his Excel-
lency
antidote
to h
swallowed,te
lv h i ch w
indigestible
ick
story, which we wish to arrive at. Is Captain
JERvis to be ruined? and is Sir WILLIAM'S observa-
tion to stand on record, backed by this extraordi-
nary instance of its truth, that there is one law for
commissioned and another for the uncommissioned,
and one law for the commander and another for
the commanded ?....-Anglo-American Times.