The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVEIN/NG, DECEMBER 4, 1866.

THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR-GEZ.fERAL-
SHIP OF THE ARMY.

(Frc in the Lancet.)

Notwithstanding the present unpoptilar and most
unsatisfactory condition of the Arms 'Medical De-
partment, which must be apparent to. even the cur-
sory reader either of the general or the medica
press, we think that there are varioug, indications of
a better time coming for the departmtent. We wish
in our present remarks to direct its, attention, and
that of the profession, to one cirrJumstanee, which,
if rightly used, may contribute more largely than
any other to the advent of this better time.
In a few months hence, we believe, expires the
term of office of the :present director- general, Sir
James Gibson. Our readers will be aware that of
late the director-general has been appointed for a
limited time—seven years. We need sqtarcely say
that the profession generally, and the Inedical de-
partment of the army in particular, will await with
intense curiosity and interest the action of the War-
office in reference to this vacancy. General Peel
will not have many more responsible duties to dis-
charge than the nomination of a director-general.
Upon the choice made it largely depends whether
an army career is to be once more popular with the
best students in our profession, and whether, on the
occurrence of another war, we are to avoid a break-
down in the medical department of the service,
which would be more disastrous and discreditable
than
the anything which
has
yet happened either:in the
Crimeany or ng
China r Bermuda. It is well, a
in-
deed, for the credit of this branch of the service that
at present our foreign relations are satisfactory.
It may be taken for granted that there will not
be a reappointment of the present director-general.
We do not attribute to him any more than his fair
share of responsibility for the present state of the
service. Many of the faults of it may probably be
traced back to the time when the director-general's
office was held in permanency. But the experiment
of periodical appointments is now being tried. It is
quite possible that such an appointment may be
made as would at the expiration of another seven
years warrant a reappointment of the holder. The
contentment of the medical service, the good sani-
tary condition of the troops, and the general re-
spect of the public and of the profession for the
department, might make such a reappointment a
duty. It will not be maintained that such a
state of matters exists now. This may be Sir
James Gibson's fault, or it may not. We are
not concerned to settle this point. But we hold
that the general condition of the army is such by uni-
versal consent as to indicate the duty of allowing
another man of standing in the medical department
to try his hand at the head of medical affairs. That
this course will be pursued is the more probable, as,
according to rumour, the health of the director-
general
is not good, and is suck as to be much more li
likely to be benefited by rest than by reappoint-
ment.

The reappointment of Sir J. Gibson being, then,
improbable, it only remains to ransack the depart-
ment for a suitable successor. It may here be re-
marked that in recent appointments there has been
no slavish following of the principle of seniority.
That principle was not observed in the selection of
the present director-general, when perhaps half a
dozen men of senior standing were passed over. Still
less was it followed in the appointment of Mr. Alex-
ander, who really represented the principle of pro-
gress in the department. In his ease probably a
score at least of seniors were passed over. It would
be unpardonable indeed at any time, and especially
now, at the present crisis of the medical branch of
the service, were the War-office to be guided by any
other feeling than a conscientious wish to find and
to appoint the best man that can be found. We
have little reason to think that the office will not
act upon the highest and purest public motives.
General Peel is rather puzzling us by his delay in
the matter of the missing warrant ; but he has to an
enviable degree the confidence of our profession
and of the department itself. He is surrounded
by men like Captain Galton and Dr. Sutherland,
who have reputations for having the well-being
of the army at heart, and for eagerly appreciating
the suggestions of one who represents the in-
telligent humanity of the country in every
thing appertaining to the welfare of the British sol-
dier. We are quite disposed, then, to believe that
the War-office will only be anxious to make the
best possible use of the opportunity which is about
to occur of making the best appointment. Nothing
but the appointment of an inferior man shall shake
our faith in its intention to do rightly in this matter.
It would be a very invidious and disagreeable pro-
cedure to discuss the various claims of man who,
from their positiGn and character, may think them-
selves entitled to this appointment. We are happily
not under any necessity to do this. High up among
the men from among whom, by all the rules of the
department, a director-general must be appointed,
is one conspicuously fit for the position, who in his
long and varied service in Malta, Bermuda, in the
Crimea, India, China, and Canada, has shown the
possession of every kind of ability. In our notice of
the army blue-book of last year we had occasion to
paper on pneumonia by Dr. Muir,
C. 8., written in the true spirit of
irnesmpaercktour-pgoennearal,
a philosophical physician, and with the keenest ap-
preciation of the present condition of medical
science. The expedition to Pekin in 1860 was, in a
medical point of view, one of the most satisfactory
expeditions on record. It called forth the enco-
miums of Lord Herbert and of Parliament. The
credit of the medical success of that expedition in
an unhealthy country, where we have lately had
such different experience, is confessedly due to
the medical and administrative ability of Dr. Muir.
of doing such a service
imagine
a clear judicial mind ; with the
e
to the
direc-
tor-generalnim departmentaw noas
bwya3
the appointment of a
power of influencing others, and of inspiring them
with esteem and confidence; one who would be
able to vindicate in all proper ways the claims of
the department and of its members; and who, by
his administrative and medical qualities, would be
likely not only to maintain the highest health prac-
ticable among the troops, but to make the experi-
ence of the army everywhere contributive to the
furtherance of medical and sanitary science. We
believe that Dr. Muir answers to this description,
and that, as much as any man, he represents the
spirit and views of Mr. Alexander, whose premature
death must be esteemed as a great misfortune to
this department. There is one other circumstance
in Dr. Muir's history, which has a most important
bearing on the question of his fitness for the
office under discussion. He is inspector-general of
Canada. The recent report of the Army Medical
Department states that Dr. Muir visited, during
the late war, the camps of the United States army,
and that he is preparing an official report of this
visit. Dr. Muir has, doubtless, informed himself of
the best results of the experience of the medical
department of the American army.

This is no time for personal flattery ; but it is a
time for the earnest expression of opinion. We
know nothing of Dr. Muir but what maybe gathered
of him from the records of Parliament and of the
Army Medical Department ; but we should not be
true to the claims of the service on the one hand, or
of a most meritorious officer on the other, if we did
not speak out now. We believe that such an ap-
pointment as that indicated would do more than any
other step to restore the efficiency of the medical de-
partment, and that in making it the War-office
would have the approval of the public, of the medi-
cal department, and of the profession at large.

The Prince de Line is the happy possessor of a
curiosity of literature which ought not to be with-
held from the forthcoming Exhibition. It consists
of a book neither written nor printed, which bears
the title " Liber Passonis nostri Jesu Christi, cuin
characteribus nulla materia composita." All the
letters are cut out of the finest vellum and pasted
on blue paper, and the reading is as easy as that of
the best types. The precision with which these
very small characters are cut excites unbounded
admiration for the patience of their author. The
German Emperor Rudolf 11. is said to have offered,
in 1640, the enormous sum of 11,000 ducats for
this curious work of art. Strangely enough the
book bears the English arms, though it is
_supposed
never to have been in England.

Nr. Chisholm Anstey's New Work.

[SECOND NOTICE.]
Plea of the Unrepresented Coinnzons for Restitution
of Franchise, an Historic Inquiry. By Thomas
Chisholm Anstey, Esq., of the Hon. Society of
the Middle Temple.

A reviewer in the Anglo-American Times says:—
" The grand maxim of the Constitution is, that its
doctrines are not prescriptible by time, nor destruc-
tible by violence, but immortal as the island it pro-
tects. There is not an author however profound,
not a teacher however elementary, who does not
enforce the same doctrine. Fashion may change
and does change. The tide of opinion may ebb and
flow, and does ebb and flow ; but the Constitution
remains a rock on which the foundations of this old
castle stands, at one time plainly visible above the
elements around it, at another almost submerged
under the full flow of the strong opinion of the day.
Men are at all times prone to the belief that the
doctrine of the hour is the panacea for all legisla-
tive evils. But if they do but live long enough they
will find the current of events set as strongly against
the doctrine that was before so highly in favour.
Many think in their wisdom they have discovered
something new ; but the writings of the Constitu-
tion would show them, if they did but know it,
that their new doctrine was as old as the Constitu-
tion itself. It is good for us that we should have
such a rock to moor to. In it we know our position
and we know our security. It stands and will stand
for all time, and it teaches us both in precedent and
principle—in theory and practice, in the records of
the rise of the Commonwealth, and in those of its
decline, the same lesson, and that lesson is—the
subject's "Right." Amongst those rights that of
the Parliamentary franchise has by degrees become
the most important as all the functions of the
Government are becoming more and more engrossed
by those who happen for the hour.to form the stand-
ing majority of the Lower House. The most strik-
ing of the cases cited by Mr. Anstey is taken from
the " Books of Oaths." The Coronation Oath and
the Oath of Allegiance have varied much with the
times. On the one side was the king and on the
other the commonalty, as co-ordinate powers treat-
ing together and concluding a compact. The sub-
ject's claim of " rights" could not have been ques-
tioned, when the King's oath acknowledged in so
many words the laws and customs of the people of
England, and especially the laws, customs, and
franchises granted by the glorious King Edward
(the Confessor), for in him and other ancient right-
ful men and devout to God, who are the adminis-
trators of them, it was, and indeed is, the habit
of our jurists to recognise the authors of those
blessings. Not less distinctly was the now disputed
right of the people to legislate acknowledged, and,
what is remarkable, without mention of any other
Estate ; for another clause of the same oath
solemnly pledged the King " to keep and guard the
laws and rightful customs which the commonalty of
his realm should choose." While liberty endured
that ancient formulary was ever in use. In the
brief tyranny after the Reformation there was sub-
stituted the more convenient specification of " the
laws and approved customs of the realm and
lawful and not prejudicial to the Crown and Im-
perial jurisdiction which the nobles and people
have made and chosen, with the King's consent"—
words, which again during the reign of Edward VI.,
" for Mary discontinued the pretension," were en-
larged into a claim of right by the monarch to that
initiative in legislation or the making of new laws,
which, as we have seen, the ancient formulary
acknowledged in the commonalty alone. Under
the Stuarts, the laws and rightful customs which
the commonalty of the kingdom have are once
more mentioned, but at length, under the House of
Nassau, the formidable word Coinmonalty was
dropped altogether, and the name of Parliament
inserted in its stead. The terms of the ancient
Hyld Odh, or Oath of Allegiance, are equally in-
structive, and their variations still more significant.
The modern liegeman promises true allegiance. If
he be learned in the history of his country, in the
maxims and practice of the Constitution, and not
afflicted with the scepticism of the hour concerning
the nature and origin of his own political rights, he
knows that " true allegiance" is to be understood by
him as by his Saxon forefathers. In the old time
it stood thus :- —" I will be faithful and true (hold
and getriwe) to N—, on the condition that he pro-
tect (healde) me as I will deserve (earnian), and all
that fulfil, which our precontract (formal) was
when I to him submitted, and chose his will."
The practice of the State has been answerable
to that theory of Constitutional obedience, and
more especially so of the question before us.
If there be one maxim more trite than an-
other in that body of law that governs her Majesty's
relations with her people, it is that which restrains
her from levying their money or challenging their
obedience otherwise than according to laws to which
themselves have freely assented. That was ever
the law under Octarchy as under Monarchy, under
every ruling house, when Parliament was an un-
known name, when it was identical with Common-
wealth, in the cradle of the Constitution, and now
in the fulness of its fortunes. During the last six
and a half centuries the powers and functions of the
ancient courts and bodies have been absorbed in the
present ascendancy of Parliament, but at no time
was that popular consent less indispensable than
now to the validity of the enactment of the tax, of
the grant of array, of the vote of supply. It was
not the case of this or that assembly or council, nor
did the relative strength or weakness of those bodies
suggest any exception or distinction. We have
since adopted the doctrine that every majority is
the quorum by which the whole community is
bound. Yet the tradition remains untouched, that
even the individual, if clearly and absolutely unre-
presented, is not so bound, albeit the whole com-
munity agree to bind him. Nor has this been disputed
even in the worst of times, nor by the highest
prerogative lawyers. When the Commons com-
menced the series of usurpations by which they
succeeded in disfranchising the vast body of their
countrymen they never sought to justify their course
by disputing the known theory of the Constitution.
The disfranchisement of hundreds and thousands of
voters was decreed by a simple resolution upon pre-
text of certain rates and taxes being unpaid, al-
though the franchises were held by immemorial pre-
scription, and each impost but as yesterday. The
Reform Act of 1832, which laid a similar condition
upon the franchise thereby created, may have pro-
ceeded on some erroneous assumption as to the cha-
racter of those proceedings. They were entirely
opposed both to principle and precedent. It is un-
true that the payment of rates and taxes is
the only or chief end of the subject's allegiance.
So long as his allegiance subsists his title
subsists also to protection in every one of his
rights, and the Elective Franchise is one of them.
Nor can it be said as long as an impost is levied on
tea and sugar, tobacco and drink, which articles he
consumes, that he does not contribute to the public
revenue. It will be impossible to justify, unless on
higher ground than that of non-payment of taxes or
rates, the exclusion of any class from the franchise.
If it be true that taxation without representation is
robbery, and that to bind the obedience of the sub-
ject to any new law it is necessary that it be con-
sented to by a Legislature in which he is repre-
sented, it follows that it is neither safe nor lawful
for the Legislature to deny that franchise
to any subject or class, not being under disability
by mason of incapacity or crime. Every subject
excluded without such cause is deprived pro tanto of
that protection of the State which is the reciprocal
condition of his allegiance unto it. And in a free
State like ours the consequences of so fatal a mis-
take are less likely to tarry than amongst a people
who have not the instincts of freedom. It behoves
members of the Legislature, therefore, to be very
careful before they pronounce against the claim of
any unrepresented class to the Elective Franchise.
The rudiments of our earliest history are scanty, for
it is in the primeval forest, in the armed host, in
the field of warlike council, that we are to seek our
true incunabula gentis. Yet it is precisely there we
find the proof we want, the proof of the Freedman's
capacity to hold and exercise every franchise of the
body politic, without restriction or stint in respect
to inferiority of worldly substance. This fact is
certain, that all persons soever, and tenant of whom-

soever, not merely a chosen few, owed their suit and
service to the king in some one or more of his courts,
whether of the Parliament from above, or of the
shire, or city, or borough, or town from below.
The tenour of the Parliamentary writ of summons
is one of many precedents from which that fact
appears. According to its exigency the Constituent
Court was required to cause election to be made by
" all men "—and the sense of that phrase is pointed
by the prefatory recital of the common interest and
concernment of all men in the well-being of the
State. Substantially that is still the language of
every Queen's writ of summons, and the indenture
of return is careful to follow it.

We have throughout used Mr. Anstey's words;
omitting the, references, and we intend to close our
notice of this Historic Inquiry by tracing out, by
the data he has given us, the successive usurpa-
tions by which the Commons succeeded in depriving
the vast body of Englishmen of the ancient rights
which the Constitution of this Realm accorded
them.