The Stockton Examiner, and South Durham and North Yorkshire Herald. — 1879-08-30 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1879.  CAPTAIN CAREY.  THE. sorry business of the purposeless sacrifice at Prince Louis NA,I.EON'S life could only have been made more humiliating and vexatious to the British public by the petty sequel of providing a scapegoat to endure personally unmerited obloquy. But the lame device has only had the effect of exciting on behalf of the proposed victim an amount of popularity equally undeserved for anything that he appears to have actually done. Phil,sophic souls may, and doubtless do, sneer at the enthusiastic fervour of the good people of I'lyruouth in getting up an address to Captain ranee expressive of their sympathy and conndence, if not admiration. But the popular mind is not given to nmderation, and does not do things by halves. A man or a woman unfairly dealt well by persons in public authority, even if it were a Is NIES PEA,: or a CATHERINE WEBSTER, would find, not only fenders, but warm par. theism or admiring adherents, unsung the portion of the public that recognised the injustice. We cannot wonder, then, that Captain CAREY, Who is not an unfairly-used murderer, but a presumably gallant soldier, who has bet n risking his life for his country in an inglorious but none the less arduous campaign in e:outh Africa, should find defenders, readily developing into admirers, when an unfounded ch arge was preferred against hins, and even declared to be proved by a court. martial. We may to k e some allowance for the biased feelings of the officers aho served on this coart-martial, influenced as they were by their ,lose propinquity in time and place to the wretched disaster which was the subject of their investigation ; but even then it is difficult to anderstand how they came to so fallacious a conclusion. The conviction of Captain CAREY assumed that he was the officer in command of a reconnoitring party, and that through his neglecting some duty that he ought to have peformed one member of that party met his death. Now, Captain CAREY affirms—and there has been nothing to contradict him—that he never was put in command of the party at all that the Prince W. in command, and he (the Captain) merely accompanied the party for the purpose of gaining :rf,irmation required for his own personal duties. This would make a great difference in his individial responsibility ; for he could not have intercued with the management c f the party until he ,ew its actual commander to be in danger ; and when he gained that knowledge it was too late to make any good use of it. But even supposing filar Capt sin CAREY had been in command, there would seem to have been nothing reprehensible or nnsoldierly in his conduct. A reconnoitring party is always supposed and required to retreat, or even to tly, before a largely superior force, instead of attempting to fight. That was the course adopted in the present instance. It was a case of us see  every man for himself, with possibly the Proverbial fate for the hindmost. That through the accident of having a restive horse one man 7,3 left behind was no reason for the whole party to have rushed back to almost certain destruction by an overwhelming force. Let those who fancy  ait some effort ought to have been made, at all risk, to save the Prince, only suppose the circumitancei to have happened conversely. If it had been (me of the troopers who was left behind, and the Prince had been amongst the foremost i.t4itives—if then Captain CARET had used his  "hclity or influence to make a stand and an attempted rescue, and the Prince had been kil:ed. !here would have been reason for accusing the C.ptain of imprudence, if not of folly. But he ww:d have been no more justified in rashly sacrihcing the British soldier's lives in a vain attempt to save the Prince than occasioning the destruction tOe:Atter in a hovel,- effort to secure a private