The Sun. — 1849-09-29 (London, England)

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1849.  One or two circumstances not already referred to by ourselves in reference to the recent courtmartial on Mr. PITMAN are eminently deserving of consideration. Scarcely any one, it must have been observed, has dared to exonerate that person from the blame under which he has been professionally excommunicated ; hardly a single individual has for an instant presumed to question the justice of the authority to which he has become amenable. Nevertheless the haughty spirit of the service, or rather of the superior officers in the service, has become occasionally manifested in indignant allusions to the manner in which the late Commander of the Childers was tried—through the evidence, it is superciliously remarked, of witnesses whose characters were already tainted. Now, we should be gratified to learn in what way the reputations of either MT. ELLIOTT or of Lieut. GRAHAM have been exposed to the obloquy of the world. IVhose assertion, whose sole assertion is it which has been accepted in testimony of the badness of the character of these unfortunate young officers and gentlemen ? Is not the solitary evidence adduced against them, the evidence of a man who has been convicted of cruelty, for inasmuch as he drove subordinate officials to desertion, to suicide, and to the madhouse—of purloining, for inasmuch as he appropriated the ship's stores to his own use—and of falsehood, for inasmuch as he deliberately made a false entry in the log-book ? Why, if nothing else were requisite to reveal the rottenness of the cause of this Mr. J. C. PITMAN, it would be sufficient to point in proof of it to the disgraceful document ridiculously called his " defence." Defence, forsooth ! Why throughout the whole of that miserable production there was not one word in extenuation of his conduct as Commander of the Ganders, there was not one intimation of the fallacy of the facts alleged against him, there was not one syllable in vindication of a name held up by the charges preferred against it to profound and universal abhorrence. The whole of this so-called defence was composed of—what? Of abuse of the prosecutors— mere abuse couched in the language of vituperation. Supposing there were no other indication of the nature of Mr. PITMAN'S temperament beyond that furnished by this wretched document, it would have been immeasurably more than enough to damniry him in the estimation of the community. And yet we are told that Messrs. GRAHAM and ELLIOTT are persons of damaged reputition, when their sole accuser is this very reputable ex-Commander. Seriously speaking, condemnation from such lips ought to be regarded rather in the light of panegyric, and so we are satisfied it is regarded at this moment by the mass of the population. A very few days have elapsed since the publication in our columns of a letter addressed to ourselves by the esteemed father of Lieutenant GRAHAM, the unfortunate young officer now being punished as a convicted felon in the county gaol of Exeter. In that interesting communication each of the accusations levelled against his son by Mr. J. C. PITMAN in his " defence" was considered categorically by the Rev. Mr. GRAHAM, and to all intents and purposes was, to our thinking, most clearly disproved. The robbery said to have been committed by Lieutenant GRAHAM on the mess funds of another vessel of war was shown, for example, to be a gross and heinous calumny The charge of intoxication turned out to be equally, if not more egregiously, slanderous! And the imputation as to his having fabricated lying stories was proved, on the authority of a shipmate, to have been literally nothing more nor less, than the perversion of some incoherent expressions uttered by Lieutenant GRAHAM when almost distracted to a state of madness by the brutal treatment received from his Commander. We have really no words at our command sufficiently emphatic to express our feelings of indignation and disgust at a course such as this, a course in which tyranny and false dealing are followed up by the slanders of vindictiveness. Less, however, could scarcely have been anticipated from a man who has not sense enough of common decency to prevent him from giving way to a burst of passion on the quarter-deck, so as actually to call the Lieutenant "a liar " before the whole ship's comp.any.  In our impression of last evening will doubtless buve been observed a suggestion thrown out by one of our correspondents, which, if correct in its premises, would at once procure the liberation of the unfortunate gentlemen now prisoners in the Exeter County Gaol. While we are sP.nguine that this hint may lead to the release of I%lr. ELLIOTT and of Lieutenant GRAHAM from their present cruel and unjust incarceration, we are far indeed from regarding even this as sufficient compensation for all they have undergone through the domineering insolence and vindictive machinations of Mr. J. C.