Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1879-09-06 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

THE ARMY BEGOLATION BILL.  The one legislative achievement of Parliament during the last Session was the passing of the above Bill. It occupied the Howie of Commons for some twenty-three or twenty-four days. It would be utterly unfair to say that the time so consumed was spent in mere obstruction. Never was there a Bill that more demanded severe criticism and a rigorous scrutiny of its provisions. It consisted of some ISO clauses, besides many shedules. When laid before the House, it was a crude and undigested mass, concocted out of the Mutiny Act and Articles of War, passed at various times and under different circumstances. Those, therefore, who believe in standing armies 'Were perfectly justified in doing what they could to modify thie measure according to their own ideas. To some persons all armies, are what Sir Bartle Prere called the army of Cetewayo, a huge, elaborately-constructed man-killing machine," and we do not feel that we have any call to improve that man-tilling machine. Indeed, the whole system of training men, and many of them men calling themselves Christians, to the art of homicide, to the scientific execution of slaughter and rapine, is so monstrous no anomaly that nothing but long familiarity with the thing, and the consequent incapacity to look upon it in the light of reason and religion, could prevpro all the world from seeing its revolting characier. The Bill, as now passed, professes to be a complete Military Code, and a wonderful code it is. It is mainly • penal code, an enumeration of the offences that may be committed by "every person subject to military law," and of the punishment to which he is liable. Those offences—many • f them not moral offences at all, but purely artificial crimes, created by military law—amount, we Should think, to some hundreds. Of the,, there are some thirty-fire punishalAs with death. How any human being in his right mind, and with his eyes open, cap, by voluntary enlistment, place himself in subjection to such • law is altogether a marvel. But the truth is that the great majority of those who enlist do not do so with their eyes open. Many of them are seduced into the act when the little intelligence they have is obfuscated by drink, and those are sober know nothing of the prodt ion in which they are about to place themselves, and of the terrible obligations they incur; for the recrniting-serjeant, of course, takes care never to enlighten them as to the condition of practical slavery into which they deliver themselves. Proally there could be no more effective check upon enlistment than a bare analysis, in simple language, hat should be within the capacity of the coalmen people, of the provisions of this new Act. The eat-Aloe-tails, exhibited in the House of Commons during the progress of the New Bill, was enotieh make any man of ordniary sensibilities shudder to think of such an instrument of torture being applied to the bare back of the unfortanate victims. It anyone were to tie a dog or a horse in such a fashion that the poor animal could not move a i finis or a °amide, and then proceed with a scourge to flay its flesh until it was one moos of weals and blend, striper, it is most certain that such a man would be prosecuted by the Society for thePreven. tion of Cruelty to Animals, and what is more, he would be scouted out of decent society as a ruffian and a brute. And yet this is the very thing they do with men born of women—men made after the .mage of God.  as 1.50L110 ST•AI(E6 Row Doww.—The Argyle. from London to China, was run down off Lial,m on Sunday, by the Norwegian steamer Harold Haartager 0 e man was Icet The Norwegian steamer put nrc Lisbon with earioue damage. The Argyle carried general error, and the lose Is estimated at /100,00 e. The following unique epistle was picked up in Yorkville yesterday : " Dear Bill,—The reason I didn't laff when you left at me in the Post Offs yieterday was became I bar • bile on my lane, and knot laff. If 1.1 she'll buret. But I Inv yu Bill, bile or no bile, laff or no tiff Yore lorin Cate. 11l dath." The Power of Prayer—An excellent lady tells what trial to her her first husband was, being a doffer at holy thing., and how, after vainly remoastratlng with him for 3 ears, elm at last oreanteed • prayer campaign concerning him, "and in led tkan three weeks from that time his horse ran away with his, and he was thrown eta of the wagon and killed."  DENTON