The Statesman.
London, England, 1812-04-16 00:00:00

O.

'Teri Akers commanding reglimint. The;s. would
l,e iirouot 1 o the hat of this House and of the pub-
lic, and held up to the most invidious comparisons.
The nutu'ier of corporal famishment* in each regi.
mein would appear ; but the grounds and writs of
tat► case would remain entirely out of OW. Be.
sides, he did sonceive that the introduction of
military questions of this still, without a crying ne-
resisity, was in itself a great public mischief. This
was now the ttii,tl discussion which had taken place
°obis very, subject iii the course of the present Ses.
lie.: ; and was it for, the. benefit of the public serjice
unit Lich iatters should he so freqeently agitated ?
Sir SAMUEL. ROMILLY explained. Hepoint.
outsevtral misrepresescations io the speech of the
tig4t honourable the Chancellor of the Escheqtier,
• Jell Misrepresentations he was astonished to find
...read h the lion. Gentleman opposite.
Ur. MOUGiLka, in a most eloquent and im.
Moira speech, which our limits will not allow us-
to give any Wag like an adequate.account of, sap.
ported the motion.- He was astonished at the line,
of argument adopted by the Chaucellor of the Ear
chequer end the Hot,. Member fur Yorkshire. The
House were told) that if the motives of those who
supported the present motion, were not such as to
oscite a spirit of mutiny among the soldiery, 'the
motion itself was nplete with every danger. It
was impossible to allude to the punishments of the
army; the bar! mention of flogging was the watch-
word to discontent; and those who were disposed
to avert this.denger %%mild oppose every. motion ,
which is Irby say with the maimermetti of
thilortn-y. -Where mita the consistency of the Hon.
Member for Yorkshire.? In the samebreith he had
de.:!ared himself unwilling to interfere at all with the
army, and prououtsced an eulogium on the late :
Mr. Windham, whose plans began and ended in '
the amelioration of the army. Ile had pointed out
freely the abuses of all kinds which existed in his time I
—the enlistment of individuals in drink Or under age
into a state of service or slavery for life. But no
such motives were ever imputed to Mr. Windham ;
it was rescued to the present question to hear argu-
mepts of such a'nature brought forward. Why,
there was not a single Session in which Parliament
did not interfere with the army, and in which they
did not discuss questions which had a tendency to
agitate the passions of On •e of which it was com-
posed, even more nearly perhaps thati the present.
To whom were the army to look up but to Parlia-
ment? Who paid them ? •Every thing, however, be.
longing to the army a as not a proper subject for par- I
liamentaty discussion. They could nor, with pro-
priety, venture to sit in judgment on the Ave of a
butte'', or on the cut of a u hisker, or of a coat,
because this being a more weilshty business, required
:bier heads than could be supposed to -be found In
parliament—P laugh), but the rewards which they
eight Jo receive, and the period at which they should
be discharged, the Commissariat, that Most.delfeitie
subject, were matter; that came with propriety before
them. The retreat to Corunita, and the Espeation to
Walcheren, whete thousands and tens of thousand* it
Our countrymen perished, were subjects upon which
the House deliberated; • but never, till this day, did '.
those who wisited tat sure them- from maip.,
resoit to such a rgateßtS as those of that IVA. Nst
even the Planner of the Waleheren Eziedilion, nor
his Coadjutor, who caused the Question to be djs. 1,
cussed with shut doors, ventured to hold such a lan7
gunge to the House. If such a ground. for the re-1
fusing of Papers was listener' to, then'there would be'
an end of nine subjects out of ten, which were dig.
cussed in the House of Commons. In a time of scar-
city, no man would dare to speak of grain, for fear
of a tumult. The Honourable Member for York-
shire would not have carried his Question of Aboli-
tioe of the Slave Trade. No man would have dared
to describe freely and'eloquontly, as he described,
the miseries of the West Indian slues, though the
tortures which/hey suffered, he was sorry to say, wets
not greater than those suffered by oor Soldiers. Then
the dangers of enquiry might have been ntged with
greater plausibility, -when a few scattered Whites..
were exposed to all the evils of a Negro insurrection. ,
The Question was, whether a document which would ;
anew whether the powers entrusted to Courts-martial
had iiceit temperately or immoderately used was to
be produced. The Right Hon. Gentleman says,
" Don't enquire; I tell you all is well." But were tity,
he would ask, afraid to look into the facts of the ease?
Were they to close their eyes to it ? And werethose out
"f doors who ventured to enter upon it not to be met by
argument but by persecution ? Would any one who
witnessed the irritability which the mention of this
subject always excited, not be almost led to the con-
clusion that aH • was net se well as it should be ?--
Now, what would be the consequences of the pro-
duction of this paper? It would either prove the
sittement of tins -Right Bon. Gentleman opposite,
which was so favourable to the Commander in Chief,
or it would disprove it The Right Hon. Gentle.
man's eulogy of the redaction of togging was quite
unintelligible. Re first denies the abuse and then he
trays—for God's sake do not ask for the paper, as it
would be productive of the most dangerous conse-
quences. Was not this conduct much more danger.
ous than openly and manfully at once to enter upon
the discussion of the question ? So far it woeldsp.
peat from severity of punishment being • dope away,
there were Neiman of persons suffering four several
limes before they could receive the whole of their
Tunishieent, 'aqd that very lately. He had a
lc:ter, dated the 16th of February, 1814, from
one of our North American settlements, in which
complaint was tnaer to a Major-General a Ger-
rsan OAcer there, who wry properly, as the law
:trod, had caused seven hundred lashes to be in-
timed on a ,an. [Hear, hear!] This was not
a solitary instance, it was stated to be tine usual com-
plement of gorrison punishment. How could this
punishment be inflicted all at once ? Other complaints
were made of dividing 500 lashes in such a way as
that 250 lashes should be given on the loier part of
the back, and 250 on smother part of the body. No
man could.doserve such a punishment. A trifling vi.
olation of duty undoubtedly merited some punish.
merit, but not flogging ' • and in cases of mutiny, or
personal vielence offered to an Officer—if the °Seer
were knocked down and trodden open, which hall-
penei in the case alluded to by him, then a severer
Panishaseet than 9gggiug ought, to be adopted. -But
nothing !ma in. reality so severe a punishment as
what degradedman to a brats) afid what harr"Md

LONDON:
TUCRSDAY, APRIL- 10, 1812.

RIOT AT SHEFFIELD.

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IThe dreadful effects of the war, which have been
long felt in these kingdoms, rim no longer be borne
1 with by the people. To the list of places suffering
under these calamities, and where the voice of the
amople has burst out against the authors of their
!,wrongs, we have now the melancholy task of adding
the very populous town of Sheffield, where the riot-
ers have not confined themselves merely to . the out.
rages practised in other towns, but have destroyed
the arms belonging to the Militia. This shows at
least that they are not disposed to proceed to extre-
; ..
settles, and that they are uninfluenced by political
considerations ; because, if they bad in view to este-
--
a blish lawless authority, or to give support to a fac-
tion, they would not. have :destroyed the means by
1
which alone they could accomplish this.
SHEFFIELD, April 14.
We are this day all In a tumult and uproar. At
i IS o'clock, about 40 or 50 poor men (who are em-
ployed in preparing a piece of land for a new bury-
' ing ground) came marching through the corn-market
lin wooden clogs, down the shambles, through the
butter market, up the otherside the shambles, and
1 into the potatoe market, where, their numbers being_
much increased, they began to throw the potatoes is
every direction, breaking the
,windows all round the
Market-place, and driving the farmers and -
from- the market. They then proceeded to break
sysn'the potato. cellars, which/were soot: emptied of
:thole contents ; one part or the asa Astetnaklog
Digit-street to Mr. Woo:Aleatory weirehousa,wike.g.
'they broke afew squares of 110111101404h1
damage. Tile greater part of thelmeple then .
to the Local Militia store-rows. blot it epee, end.