The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-04 00:00:00

which it had been directed was within 200 yards of the pri-
soner's quarters. With respect to the fourth count of the
third charge, my humble opinion is, that it falls to the ground.
But, although the detachment which proceeded to Queen_
square on Monday morning, the 31st of October, appears to
have been despatched thither under directions from Lieutenant-
Colonel Brereton, I should not discharge my duty were I
Lit: to omit remarking upon the extraordinary arrangement
" with respect to the divided command of Captain Warring_
ton's troop upon that occasion, as developed by the pri-
,f . sonar in his defence ; for it appears, by his own showing, that
after Cornet Kelson marched off with the detachment, Lieu-
tenant. Colonel Brereton had nothing to do with the reserve, or
the time, or occasion, for its being called upon. But Cornet
Kelson, the inferior officer, is to send for Capt. Warrington, his
superior officer, without any reference to Lieutenant-Colonel
Brereton, as soon as there is any thing to do; and hew does
the Cornet obey that order ? He waits till near seven o'clock
before he sends for his Captain, although the detachment was
called upon two hours before seven o'clock, to use force for
effectually putting down the rioters. Having thus gone over
such parts of the evidence produced before the Court as appear
to me to be essential to the case, I should no longer have tres-
passed on the time of the Court had not the prisoner upon several
occasions rested his justification, either directly or indirectly,
upon the impossibility or illegality of his acting in any case
against therioters without the positive and personal attendance
of a-Magistrate. This plea of justification will be found to be urged
or implied in an infinity of questions, or replies to questions,
which are recorded on the Court's proceedings ; and the
Prisoner, twice in the course of his address to the Court,
pronounces such principle to be in accordance with the
instructions under which he acted last winter in the
south-west district. I can speak well to those instructions,
because they were in strict accordance with instructions issued
by me to every officer and non-commissioned of cavalry in
Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, when (during the winter of 1829,
30) I held the command of the troops which were sent into that
district to put down the disturbances. Those instructions cer-
tainly were to the effect, that no troop or detachment was to be
taken out but by the written requisition or personal attendance
.of a Magistrate, without which restriction his Majesty's troops
would have been harrassed in all directions, upon every village
• disturbance, or expected disturbance, or whenever a private
gentleman chose to fancy that an attack was about to be made
on his house and premises. All this is well known to three of
4 the members of this Honourable Court, who then commanded
regiments under my orders. But surely the position ofan officer
%lf
holding a detached command in a disturbed district, under cir-
,se • cum-stances such as I have represented, is not to be laid upon a
4 parallel with the position of an officer placed in command of a
• troop under circumstances such as those in which the prisoner
stood in this city, between mid-day of the 30th October till sun-
rise of the following day ; during which most awful period
the rioters were proceeding in systematic progression. Does
the prisoner mean to infer that if, whilst acting in the south.
.west district, under Sir W. Heathcote's directions, that
gentleman's house had been about to be fired by a body
• of incendiaries whilst the owner was from home, and if the
prisoner had chanced to be passing by at the time with his
troop, he would not have used force to check so daring' an out-
rage? Or had Winchester gaol been forced by a body of riot.
ers,io peace officer being present, and had the prisoner been at
hand with his troop, that he would have hesitated to repel the
tumult and the outrage, to disperse the delinquents, ,to take
them into custody, or, if driven to the last extremity, to put
them to death ? The principle then which most alarms me in
the prisoner's address to the Court, and which he has attempted
to maintain in different parts of his defence, is, that the refusal
of an officer to act without a magistrate is "in strict ac-
cordance with the rules of the service ?" Standing as Ido
here, at the suit of my Sovereign, I should ill indeed acquit my
self of the trust which has been reposed in me, were I not to
record upon the proceedings of this Court, my most distinct and
decided protest against the doctrine thus set up by the
prisoner,—a doctrine at variance with all the declared opinions
of our soundest crown lawyers since the days of Elizabeth,—a
doctrine not in strict accordance with, but most decidedly op_
posed to, the orders and regulations of his Majesty's service, as
well as to the law of this land,—a doctrine calculated not only
to destroy the moral as well as the professional principles of
the soldier, but to expose the person as well as the property of
the subject to violence and destruction,—a doctrine which,
if admitted, would enable every officer when placed in com-
mand of his Majesty's troops for the suppression of; tumult
to place the inertness of the civil power between himself and
the personal responsibility of his station, and under the protec-
tion of such inertness to shelter himself from blame and disgrace.
A duty more delicate or more invidious, yet more important,
can scarcely be conceived than that in which a military officer
is engaged when employed, either with or without a peace-officer,
for the suppression of tumult and the preservation of the public
peace; and the case now unhappily before the Court af-
fords a most deplorable illustration of the evils that may arise
from a misconception of the principles by which the discharge
of this duty should be regulated. The substance of the law for
the guidance of the military in the suppression of riots, as entered
in his Majesty's Regulations and Orders of the Army, is to the
following effect :—" In ease of any sudden riot or breach of the
peace by an assembled multitude, any of his Majesty's subjects,
without the presence of a peace-officer of any description, may
arm themselves, and may, of course, use ordinary means of force
to suppress such riot and disturbance." And what his Majesty's
subjects may do, they also ought to do, for the suppression of
public tumult, when an exigency may require that such means
be resorted to. Whatever any other class of his Majesty's sub-
jects may do, the military may unquestionably do so also.
However, it is by all means advisable to procure a Justice
of the Peace to attend, and for the military to act under
his immediate orders, when such attendance and the
sanction of such orders can be obtained, as it not only
prevents any disposition to unnecessary violence on the
part of those who act in repelling the tumult; but it induces
also, from the known authority of such Magistrate, a more
ready submission on the part of the rioters to the measures used
for such purpose; but still, in great and sudden emergency,
the military, as well as all other individuals, may act without
their presence, or without the presence of any peace-officer
whatever. Such was the opinion of the great luminary of the
law, the late Lord Ellenborough, when Attorney-General of
England. To this opinion of Lord Ellenborough I may add
that of Sir James Mansfield, and in our own immediate time,
that of Lord Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Tyndal. The humanity
and forbearance of the British soldier upon every occasion of
popular tumult or commotions have been proverbial for ages.
Long may those qualities form his highest attributes! I would
abhor the soldier that could take advantage of tumult
to shed unnecessarily one drop of blood. Bear and forbear
should be our motto. But I may ask, are there no occa-
sions where forbearance ceases to be a virtue ? Are there
not limits beyond which forbearance becomes criminal—when
it adds atrocity to atrocity, and sacrifice to sacrifice—and when
the innocent and well-disposed, rather than the guilty and evil
designing, are compromised in its consequences ? A reply
to these questions may be too readily, too mournfully furnished
by the city of Bristol. Let us consider, moreover, how many
circumstances may occur to cause the absence of all civil au-
thority—sickness, infirmity, distance, intervention, supineness,
disinclination. Any of these may, peradventure, tend to keep
a peace-officer from the actual scene of riot and outrage. 'Tis
on those occasions that his Majesty's troops, and especially the
officers who command them, are to trust to the regulations
prescribed by his gracious Majesty for their guidance, founded
indeed upon the declared and acknowledged law of the land.
Having elms been informed of the primary use and object of the
law, I do boldly affirm that the first public service due from the
soldier to his country is the maintenance of that law, and that
it becomes the military even in the absence of a peace-officer, to
put down riot by force, whenever such riot and tumult shall be
sufficiently outrageous to place the life or the property of the
• subject decidedly in danger, and when that danger cannot be
turned aside without forcible interference. And here I may be
allowed to observe that the officer placed in command of a body
of troops upon such occasion is not to consider the cause of the
absence of all civil authority, nor, under any presumed derelic.
Lion of thity on the part of the Magistracy, to refuse to do his
duty, when the riot is either so sudden, so urgent, or so atro-
cious, as imperatively to demand his decided interposition.
I repeat that my observations do not point at trifling oc-
casions ; but I have no hesitation in declaring, that they
do point at all such outrages and enormities as those
which, commencing with the destruction of the Bridewell
soon after noon on Sunday, the 30th October, were perpetrated
throughout the city of Bristol, without check or controul, or
even an attempt at interference until five o'clock on the follow-
ing morning. Is it that we are paid by the public, and that we
have no domestic service to perform ? Shall the open rebel,
the public robber, and the midnight incendiary, be suffered to
stalk forth in our streets, to proceed from atrocity to atrocity,
and his Majesty's troops be told that they can lay no hands
upon them but in the presence of a Magistrate? Shall our
Cities be fired at all points, and sacrilege be carried to the very
thresholds of our altars, and British troops be taught that
they must stand by and look on, or to be held fast in their
quarters, till a peace-officer shall arrive to command and to
direct their exertions? God forbid! I say God in heaven
forbid ! I now commit the case of the prisoner into the hands
of this Honourable Court. In doing which I have only to
express my most earnest desire that, when the Court shall pro-
ceed to pronounce judgment, should the conduct of the prisoner
jn either of the charges, or in any part of either charge, admit
of different constructions, the Court will put that construction
upon his couduct which is most favourable to the prisoner, to
the utmost extent, compatible with their duty to his Majesty's
service, and to the obligation under which their judgment is
to be pronounced; and whatever that judgment may be, as
affecting the prisoner, I most sincerely and most fervently pray
that the result of this trial may be productive of benefit, not
Merely to the interests. of the British Army, but, what is of
far deeper impart, to the interests of the nation at large! And
May the flames of Bristol serve as a beacon to every town and
city in the United Kingdom.
Sir C. Dalbiac having sat down, the Court immediately ad-
journed.
- Captain Warrington was accompanied into Court each day
by his Counsel, Mr. Lloyd Williams, and several military
friends, among whom we recognized Major-General Peachy,
Major-General Sir George Colburn, the Hon. Colonel Brown,
Colonel Johnstone,, Major Frazer, Captain Milward, RN., Cap-
tain Wetherell, of the 3d Dragoon Guards, and Captain Met.
chain, and Lieutenants Martin and Dyson of the same distin-
gUlthed corps.

THURSDAY' NIGHT.
lt is perfectly impossible to describe the sensation creat i
Itriatol on hearing the evidence given by Major Beckwithed onn
tht Court-martial held upon Captain Warrington. It has been
well known that a Committee of Inquiry has been in tbe con.
slant habit of meeting for the examination of witnesses relative
"'the unfortunate riots here, ever since their copclusion, and