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

COURT-MARTIAL ON CAPTAIN W. H.
WARRINGTON.
Rh:187'010 THURSDAY, FIT.
The Court was this morning crowded beyond all former pre-
cedent. With much difficulty the President and the other
members of the Court reached their respective seats, and their
names having been called over and answered to, by the Deputy
Judge-Advocate, Captain Warrington was summoned into
Court. The President then announced to the Court that Cap-
tain Warrington wished, with their approval and the sanction
of the prosecutor, to submit to them an addition to the docu-
mentary evidence already produced, and which had been. mis-
laid on a previous occasion. It was an order from Major-Gene-
ral Sir Colin Campbell, the General commanding the south-
west district during the disturbances there in the latter part of
1830, which enjoined that any officer, when his services awl'
those of the force which he commanded were requested by4lithe
civil authorities, should demand to be accompanied by a Miigi-
strate, and receive a written requisition authorising him to
a copy of which was to be immediately forwarded to the General
at his head-quarters at Winchester. The above order was
signed by Lieut.-Col. Gurwood, Brigade-Major of the district.

-Sir CHARLES DA LBIAC had not the slightest objection
to the document in question being received, and stated that the
prisoner would find he had done him ample justice on that point.
The Gallant General then delivered, in the most impressive and
I feeling manner, the following address, the utmost silence and
attention prevailing throughout the Court during the entire
period of its delivery :
" Mr. President, and the members of this Honourable Court,
—I now approach the last stage of the painful duty which I
have to sustain during this trial. The tragical event which
brought the recent proceedings of a former Court to an abrupt
termination, has, unhappily for Captain Warrington, deprived
him of a witness, whose testimony might have been most im-
portant to this cause, and I am not only willing but most de-
sirous
that the loss which he has sustained may be steadily kept
in view by his judges. I must, however, with perfect freedom
confess that this disadvantage does by no means appear to me
so severe as the prisoner himself may have been tempted to
imagine. My honest impression upon a dispassionate survey
of the evidence is, that the points of his defence which have been
weakened by the removal of his commanding officer are not of
essential and vital importance to his case. It might, on certain
points of subordinate moment, have strengthened his vindica-
tion ; but in my conscientious belief it could by no possibility
have protected him against the main force of the charges pre-
ferred in the accusation. It must be remembered, that were
that witness at this moment amongst us, on many points he
could scarcely open his mouth in exculpation of the prisoner
without pronouncing to the same extent his own condemna-
tion. The prisoner has pleaded in extenuation of his conduct
throughout Sunday night, the 30th, and part of Monday morn-
ing, the 31st of October, that during that awful period of the
Bristol riots no Magistrate or peace-officer ever made Isis ap-
pearance at the quarters of his troop, to require, to direct, or
to enforce the employment of the military in any attempt to
put down the riots, until Mr. Alderman Camplin arrived be-
tween four and five o'clock on Monday morning at the Horse-
bazaar, and that until the receipt by Captain Warring-
ton of the Mayor's letter, dated three o'clock that morning,
no Magistrate was to be heard of. I trust I shall com-
mand the credit of the Court when I assert, that from the mo-
ment I commenced the task of prosecutor on this trial, my
sole aim was to prove, by every fair and equitable means, the
charges which were preferred against the prisoner to the
extent to which I deemed him culpable, and that, in pursuing
this task, it was my earnest and invariable endeavour to avoid
(no less indirectly than directly) the implication of the conduct
of other persons, who, not being before the Court, were with-
out the means to defend themselves against accusation. And
I feel well assured, that had I, in any one instance, at-
tempted to swerve from this course of proceeding, I should
have been checked immediately by the Hon. President. The
plea, however, which the prisoner had set up, of a want of ac-
tivity on the part of the Magistrates, has been justified by evi-
dence produced before the Court—first, incidentally in the re_
ply of a witness to a question put by the Court in the course of
the prosecution, and again in the general statement of a wit-
ness examined on the defence. Although, therefore, Ido not
stand here to impeach the conduct of the Bristol Magistrates, 1
conceive it would be utterly at variance with the impartiality
which I have professed to maintain between the King and the
prisoner throughout this trial, were Ito decline admitting that
the absence of all civil authority from the station of the military
during the awful night of Sunday, and until the arrival of Mr.
Alderman Camplin at the Horse Bazaar between four and five
o'clock on Monday morning, was a circumstance calculated in a
variety of ways to prove prejudicial to the small military force
then employed in Bristol; and in full justice to the prisoner I
must also remark, as the document is recorded.by the Court
in evidence against him, that the letter of the Chief Magis-
trate of the city is dated simply "Bristol, three o'clock, Monday
morning, Oct. 31st," without any designation of the house or
the spot to which reference could be had to the said Chief Ma-
gistrate in case of urgent or further necessity. It appears to me,
however, that no circumstance of this kind can relieve the pri-
soner of any material part of the accusation against him. In
reviewing the evidence produced in support of the first charge,
I may be permitted, I trust without impropriety, to separate
certain of the premises, and of the coincidences as to t.l.ne and
circumstance (attached to the accusation), from the substance of
the charge or the offence itself. First, then, as to certain of the
premises and coincidences as to time and circumstance. It has
been shown that Captain Warrington was in the personal com-
mand of a troop of the 3d Dragoon Guards in Bristol on the
night of Sunday, the 30th of October, 1831, at a time when
the city was the scene of most outrageous and alarming
riots—that the said troop had been repeatedly called out
by order of the Magistrates to quell the rioters—that
several of the public and other buildings in the city,
had been fired by the rioters, some of which buildings were
already consumed, and others still in flames ;' and finally, that
the Custom-house was left by the prisoner, as far as in
bins lay, to the mercy of the rioters, by whom it was shortly
after set en fire, and totally destroyed. Another coincidence
' attached to the accusation is, that the troop of the 3d Dragoon
Guards was then the only military force in Bristol. Now
though it has been shown that the said troop was the only
portion of his Majesty's regular troops then in Bristol, it
has also been shown that in the course of the night of Sunday
the 30th of October, the Doddington Troop of Yeomanry
Cavalry was for a certain time within the city. Its services,
however, from some cause or other (which is not within my
province to investigate) were never rendered available. I shall
leave to the Court to consider how far the circumstance of the
said troop of yeomanry cavalry having been for a short time in
Bristol in the course of the said night, can affect the mails
substance of the offence. Furthermore it has been laid in the
general accusation that the offence, as far as it relates to the
prisoner's refusal to turn out his troop or any part thereof, was
committed between eleven and twelve o'clock on the said Sunday
night, and upon this point there has certainly been considerable
variance in the evidence before the Court. In my opening ad-
dress, I ventured to prepare the Court:for discrepancies of this
kind, observing, at the same time, that I should have it in my
power to reconcile all such discrepancies as to every essential
point. Nor do I know that I can more fully illustrate the
expediency of due allowance being made for discrepancies of
this nature, or for miscalculations into which all of us may be
carried, under similar circumstances, than by observing that
althought the hour " between eleven and twelve o'clock" was laid
in the charge solely in consequence of a deposition made by Mr.
Kington within a few days after the Bristol riots, yet, upon
snore minute inquiry, at some short time preceding this trial,
the impression of Mr. Kington was, that the time might have
been fixed with more accuracy at from ten to half-past ten
o'clock. Upon this point Mr. Stevens deposes that he met Mr.
Kington at half-past ten, and they subsequently proceeded to
College-green, thence to the Bishop's Palace, thence to the
Boar's Head-yard, which latter is the same as the Horse Ba-
zaar. The third evidence which deposes as to the time is John
Caulfield, the waiter at Itaves's Hotel. Lastly, troop-ser-
geant-major Martin's evidence wouldlicarry the time to about
twelve o'clock, because he fixes that hour (though inaccu-
rately) as the period when the troop turned out in consequence
of the aforesaid attack on Reeves's Hotel. Were it really es-
sential to establish in the minds of this Court that Mr. King_
ton's application to Captain I'Varrington was positively after
rind not (n ore the hour of eleven o'clock on Sunday night, 1
should say that John Caulfield's evidence upon this point was
the one most to be relied upon. The premises and the coin-
cidences as to time and circumstance attached to the accusation
in the Ist charge having thus been disposed of, the essence of
that charge resolves itself into a narrow compass,—namely,
" that he, Captain Warrrington, did not only refuse to order
out the said troop, or any part thereof, or to take any step
for the purpose so stated, but used no means of conveying
the information so received by him, or the purport thereof, to
Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton, who then held the chief mili-
tary command in the city, or of obtaining from the said
Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton any order applicable to the
occasion." And here I must observe, its answer to the
appeal made by the prisoner to the Court, as to whether he
was bound, in the words of the charge, "to order out the
troop, &c." that the accusation is not to the effect of his having
disobeyed the order of the Magistrate, but that being informed
by a person of respectability of the danger to which his Ma-
jesty's Custom-house was exposed, and knowing, as Captain
Warrington well did, the enormities committed by the mob
throughout the day, he did not take those measures which a re-
gard for the public safety, the honour of Isis Majesty's arms, and
his own character as an officer, desnanded of him. I shall here
assume those terms of the prisoner's refusal which, in my
humble judgment, appear the most appropriate, at the same
time that they are the most favourable to the prisoner. They
are the precise terms given in Mr. Kington's reply to the last
question put to:hisn by the Court, namely, that he, Captain War-
rington, " could not move without the express orders of Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Brereton ;" the prisoner having previously stated
to Mr. Kington, that he did not know where the Lieutenant_
Colonel was to be found. If the command which the prisoner
received, not to move from his quarters without the express or.
ders of his superior officer, were so very peremptory, there
should at least have been consistency in the prisoner's obedience,
He should not have adhered to those commands upon some oc-
cadons, and have departed from them upon others. An officer
has no right to blow hot and cold, in the same breath, upon
questions of duty. He has no right to play fast and loose
with Isis command at a time when the public safety and the
honour of his Majesty's anus are set at their highest stake.
It is distinctly shown by the testimony of Mr. Gresley, pro-
duced in support of the first count of the 3d charge (to which
I shall have occasion again to revert), that the prisoner at three
o'clock ms the same afternoon of Sunday the 30th of October,
had of himself ordered out a detachment under Cornet Kelson,
to proceed to the New Gaol, without any previous authority for
to doing, But the most remarkable eirctimstatice attending