MUTINY BILL. (Hansard, 6 March 1812)

§ Mr. Whitbread
wished to propose a clause, which however he hoped the hon. gentleman opposite would frame, as he would do it much better than he could. Schools had been established in the army, in order to qualify the soldiers for noncommissioned officers. He had understood the officer could order the men to attend such schools, but a learned judge 1202 bad declared, that such order was illegal, and that consequently a soldier refusing to obey such command, and advising another not to obey, was guilty of no offence. An action was pending against him (Mr. Whitbread) for imprisoning a man under such circumstances, which was to have been brought on that day, but which had been postponed, after having been kept hanging over him a year a half, at a very considerable expence. Now, when a provision was made in the Army Estimates for maintaining such schools, and officers were directed to send the men under their command to them, he thought they ought to be empowered to force their attendance. He begged to read what had been said by the learned judge. His words were:" That the order to go to school was an order which appeared to him not to be warranted by any law. The men were unwise in not availing themselves of such opportunities for improvement, but he knew of no law that could force them to attend." Thus, it should appear, that one man saying to another, "I will not obey the order to go to school, and I advise you not to obey it," was no offence. The order was, in the opinion of the judge, illegal, therefore the man had a right to give such advice: hence it followed, that soldiers were justified in encouraging one another not to obey their officers. Orders had been some time ago issued by the duke of York, directing the officers to send their men to school. In consequence of this, if an officer failed to give orders to that effect, he might be brought to a court-martial; and if he forced them to attend, he might, in consequence, be brought to trial. A sort of mutiny was thus encouraged, and the whole discipline of the army broken in upon.

§ Lord Palmerston
observed, that the subject was entitled to serious consideration: but to attend the schools had not been considered as any part of military duty. Schools had certainly been established, and a provision made for maintaining them in the Army Estimates, this was done, that those wishing to avail themselves of such an advantage might do so, but still to attend or not to attend had been left wholly optional to the parties. In almost every instance, where an individual was qualified to hold the situation of a non-commissioned officer he would be happy to avail himself of the advantage held out to him by these schools, and therefore it was as well to leave it optional for him to attend.

§ Mr. Frankland
was of opinion, that however advantageous it might be to the men to attend, they ought not to be forced to go to school.

§ Mr. Whitbread
, before the agitation of the question that day, had never heard the legality of an officer ordering his men to attend, doubted by any lawyer or officer with whom he had conversed. The noble lord gave it up in a legal point of view altogether, but he believed he would not find an officer who was not of opinion that he ought to have power to punish disobedience to such an order, as well as disobedience to any other. Had he known that it was to be left optional to the soldier to attend the schools established, he should have paused before he consented to the vote proposed for their support.

§ Mr. Manners Sutton
admitted that if it was ordered at the Horse Guards that the men should be sent to school, that order ought to be obeyed as much as any other, and disobedience punished accordingly. It was however unnecessary to introduce a clause into the Mutiny Bill on the subject, as when such an order was issued, disobedience could be punished under the act as it at present stood, without adding to it the clause proposed.

§ Mr. Whitbread
said, the order from the Horse Guards directed the establishing of schools; and an officer was placed in a disagreeable situation, if, when he directed the men to attend such schools they might refuse to do so.

Colonel Dillon
remarked, that men did not enlist to go to school, and thought it would injure the recruiting service if an idea went abroad, that they were to be forced to attend.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer
stated it not to have been the intention of the duke of York to make the attendance of the men compulsory, though much advantage was expected from the establishment of schools in the army.

§ General Tarleton
thought the subject entitled to serious consideration.

§ Mr. Whitbread
said, the action commenced against him was not for confining a man who had disobeyed his order to go to school, but it was for putting under imprisonment one who had incited others to disobey his orders.

§ Mr. Brougham
wished to know if it was the intention to introduce any clause to do away military flogging?

§ Lord Palmerston
said it was not, but that the regulation of last session, leaving the 1204 option or imprisonment to courts martial, would be rendered more general.

§ Mr. Brougham
said, that as it was not probable he should be present to take any part in the discussion which was soon to take place upon the subject of military punishments, he begged leave to take that opportunity of entering his solemn protest against the practice of punishment by flogging. As a punishment, it was absurd and inconsistent with every end of punishment—it was equally incompetent to reform the culprit, or to deter others. The greater part of the leading military authorities of the country had all been-unanimous in condemning the practice. Sir Robert Wilson, general Stuart, general Money, and a variety of others, the most experienced and distinguished officers in the service, had employed all their talents and influence to root out the practice from the army. It had its principle in torture, and therefore must always be most objectionable, for two reasons. First, that it could not fail to turn the feelings of the people witnessing the horrid spectacle, in favour of the sufferer, however criminal; and next, that it had a direct and inevitable tendency to brutalize the people habituated to the practice of it. In stating this, he mentioned nothing but what had been already stated; His object, however, at the present was, rather to enter his protest generally against the practice, than to enter then into any argumentative view of the question.—There was another point to which he wished to advert before he sat down. There was, he believed, no clause in the present act, limiting the power of the crown as to the enlistment of foreign troops. No one could read the Convention act without seeing and admiring the jealous precaution of our ancestors at the time of the Revolution, who would not suffer any denizen, not even a naturalized alien, to hold any place of trust or influence under the crown. It would be well to see something like the same spirit more active now than it appeared to be, now when foreigners were not only finding their way into regiments, but into commissions and commands; even the 10th light dragoons, "the Prince's Own," hitherto made up of English subjects, was now filling with foreigners of every description. This once English corps might now be said to have been Germanized. Germans of all desriptions—Germans who were prisoners of war, had been seduced 1205 from their allegiance to their native country, and prevailed upon to enter into the "Prince's Own." He had authority for stating that foreigners, to the number of fifty and sixty at a time, had been enlisted into this very regiment, the 10th light dragoons. He asked if this was decent at a time when there was known to be prevalent throughout the country so sore a feeling and jealousy upon this topic? He complained also of the sending 149 men from the Hulks into one regiment at Jersey—one of the best disciplined and most morally conducted in the service. It had been said, that for men from the hulks they were well conducted; but was it a favour to any regiment to have even the pick and choose of the hulks—to have attached to them a corps d'elite of condemned culprits and felons? The men originally belonging to the regiment were feelingly described by their commander as coming to him with broken hearts to complain of and deplore the miserable and disgraceful association into which they had so undeservedly fallen. The hon. and learned gentleman in concluding, repeated his protest against the flogging system, which he reprobated as most impolitic, sanguinary and barbarous.

§ Mr. Manners Sutton
said, he should not then enter into the question of the necessity or impolicy of corporal punishment; but he should distinctly state that it had not entered into his contemplation to introduce a clause into the present Bill for the total abolition of Bogging. He thought it impracticable to abolish it altogether. What had been already done by the clause introduced into the Mutiny act last year, had succeeded considerably in making the practice less general—of which he would give to the House a conclusive proof. From January 1811, to December 1811, both inclusive, there had been but eight sentences for flogging by general courts martial, and, what was still more remarkable, of those eight, but one had occurred since March, the time at which the clause passed, and the other seven had taken place in the months preceding March; and of the whole eight but one had been inflicted—and that one had been offered to be commuted for general service, and was refused—the man preferring to undergo the 700 lashes rather than so commute. But he should be glad to know, what gentlemen would substitute in place of flogging? Imprisonment had been spoken of; but how could imprisonment be resorted 1206 to oh actual service? Within the period he had just stated, where there were but eight sentences here, there had been no less than 40 undergone in Portugal. He wished gentlemen would look at such questions practically, before they amused themselves with launching out into invectives against a mode of punishment which could not, he believed, be totally abolished without endangering the general discipline of the army. He thought that the strong terms of barbarous and sanguinary torture,' should not, have been so wantonly applied—they might do much mischief, and could be productive of no good.

§ Colonel Duckett
said, that, from seventeen years experience of home service, he could state, that all the colonels of regiments with whom he had had intercourse, had agreed in the indispensible necessity of corporal punishment. He was himself averse to it, but thought that the awe and dread of it were very effectual to preserve military discipline.

Colonel Dillon
was not for the immediate and absolute abolition of corporal punishment; he had been glad of the clause of last year as tending gradually to rescind it; and thought that it ought to be suffered to drop of itself. He had no doubt but that in three years we should not hear a solitary instance of such punishment, and suggested the idea of forming, in imitation of the French, colonial corps for condemned soldiers.

§ Mr. Brougham
said, that he never meant that if flogging was abolished, no punishment at all should be substituted in its place. He never meant to hold out such a bribe to mutiny and disorder: far from it. It was not the degree, but the kind of severity he reprobated. For instance, instead of running the risk of brutalizing a whole regiment, by witnessing the spectacle of a wretch gradually sinking under the tedious torture of a thousand lashes, who had been guilty of mutiny, he would shoot him at once. And as for crimes not worthy of death, could there not be devised a variety of ways of punishing a soldier, even upon actual service? He had been accused of speaking against this odious system, in terms of unwarrantable invective. His language might have been too Strong for the delicacy of some gentlemen; but had it been stronger, it must have been too weak to express his abhorrence of this mode of punishment. But the hon. and learned gentleman had la- 1207 mented the general animadversions without doors, that had been made upon this system. And what was the answer the hon. and learned gentleman himself gave to his own lamentations? Why, that in the last year this barbarous practice had decreased to eight within the whole year, and but one of those inflicted! Now (said Mr. Brougham), I contend that this is a distinctly deducible consequence from those very animadversions. The press without called the attention of the public to, and fixed it immovably upon, this flagrant system of punishment. The public feeling had, at length, as it always must have, sooner or later, its influence within these walls; and accordingly the first step towards the utter abolition of this odious punishment was made in the introduction of the clause of last year, into the Mutiny Bill. Such, Sir, was the work of a free press; and I cannot but sincerely lament that those who were bold and honest enough to begin this battle in the cause of humanity—that those who fought the good fight, and won an inestimable victory in that great cause—that Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Drakard should now be immured within a prison. Gentlemen smile, no doubt with disdain, at the guilty familiarity of citing before their grave authority individuals comparatively so obscure. I admit them to be so; and all I wish those gentlemen is, that their zeal for truth and their country may never place them where less prudential patriotism has placed their less fortunate fellow subjects. I say, therefore, that the animadversions of an honest press have produced this change in the practice of military flogging, so triumphantly stated by the hon. and learned Judge Advocate; and that the legislature had been obliged, with respect to this question, to act upon the very principles of Air. Cobbett, who is now in gaol for his unseasonable declaration of them. It is now, I rejoice to find, in the hands of my worthy friend, the member for Westminster (Sir F. Burdett), and backed by his talents and perseverance it would be criminal to despair of its ultimate success.

§ Mr. Manners Sutton
repeated that those public animadversions upon military punishment had been, to his knowledge, gross exaggerations, and as for the happy abatement in the practice of flogging, he could not help thinking, notwithstanding the hon. and learned gentleman's vehement declamation, that that change was at least to be as fairly attributed to the judi- 1208 cious and meritorious discretion of the gallant officers who sat on the respective general courts martial, as to the great patriotism or high public spirit of even Mr. Cobbett himself! (Hear, hear!)

§ Sir George Warrender
felt extremely hurt that the indiscreet language of the hon. and learned gentleman should go out to the public, as bidding the army look up to Mr. Cobbett for redress instead of their own officers. (Hear, hear)

§ Lord Palmerston
could not understand how the substitution of death for flogging was rendering the military code less sanguinary than it was at present represented to be.

§ General Tarleton
strongly censured the idea of bidding the army of the country look up to Mr. Cobbett and receive their instructions from him, as if he could know more of military matters than those who have spent their lives in the service.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer
observed, that if the hon. and learned gentleman had had any clause to propose, then the discussion which had now taken place would not have been lost; but, as it was, he must express his sorrow that so much time had been spent without any effective progress having been made in the Bill.

§ Sir J. Newport
called the attention of the Committee to this subject, as practiced in Ireland and Scotland, where, contrary to the practice in England, soldiers were liable to be billeted in private families. This, he stated, had been found to be a very serious and oppressive burden, even when fairly and equally laid on; but, in the mode in which it was occasionally administered, it had been experienced to be an evil hardly capable of endurance. Large sums, it was well known, were in many instances, paid rather than suffer soldiers to be billeted on private families; and the effect of this had been such, that, in many instances, soldiers bad fallen upon, devices, to get themselves billeted on persons, who, they knew, would pay any money to procure lodgings for them elsewhere; thus subjecting those persons to grievous and uncalled for burdens. This was peculiarly the case with respect to Quakers, whom he had known to have soldiers billeted upon them three times for once in proportion to their neighbours. This was a collusion, which from what he 1209 had heard of it, he believed it was hardly possible to guard against. This he did know, that, in the place which he had the honour to represent, almost every person who had the hardihood to give their suffrages for him (Sir J. Newport), were in a peculiar manner made the objects of this abuse.
After some conversation, in which Mr. W. Pole stated, that if any complaints were made on this subject, it would be strictly attended to, the clause was allowed to pass as it stood in the Bill. The other clauses in the Bill were gone through, when the House resumed, and the report was ordered to be received on Monday.