A DRUNKEN FROLIC.
While here, two of our sergeants, in a drunken frolic, took it into
their head to go and see their sweethearts in Wexford. When they
came thoroughly to their senses, they were far on the journey, and
thinking their crime would be the same, they entered the town. Their
absence being discovered, a party was sent after them, and they had
not been many hours in the place, when they were found, and marched
back prisoners to their regiment.
We expected they would have got off, by being reduced from their
rank; but the commanding officer seemed to consider their crime of
too heinous a nature, to let them escape with an ordinary punishment.
They were tried by a General Regimental Court Martial, and sentenced
to be reduced to the rank and pay of private, to receive five hundred
lashes, to be branded on the side with the letter D, and afterwards
to be sent to (what is usually termed) a banished regiment. One of
them was an intelligent man, who had been respectably brought up—the
other a young man scarcely twenty years of age; the former did not
live to go abroad—he died in Dublin, I believe of a broken heart; the
other went abroad, but I never heard what became of him.
The impression throughout the regiment at the time was, that the
sentence was most unreasonably severe, particularly that part of it
that awarded the corporeal punishment. Will that disgrace to the
country never be done away with? I am perfectly convinced it could be
done without, and those who advocate it, must be men who are either
wofully ignorant of human nature, or whose passions obscure their
reason, and induce them to act contrary to their better judgment;
the latter is the most common of the two. I have known commanding
officers who have acted in this respect rationally and wisely, while
their personal feelings were not strongly excited; but who, when they
were so, committed the most flagrant injustice.
Why should there not be a definite code of military laws for the
army? for that abstruse, vague, and indefinable thing called ‘the
mutiny act,’ surely does not deserve the name. I defy any two persons
separately, to make the same commentary on it. In it so much is left
to the private opinion of courts martial, that the sentences passed
by them are often preposterously unequal: for instance, I have known
a man tried by one court martial, and sentenced to three hundred
lashes, and another for the same crime, without any palliating
circumstance in his favour, sentenced to fourteen days’ solitary
confinement. What are we to make of this inconsistency? It is evident
it proceeded from the temper of the individuals composing the court.
If these things appear hard or unjust, why not rectify them, by
attaching a definite punishment to every crime, at least as far as
circumstances admitted? The business of courts martial would then be
clear and easy; nor would officers feel themselves in the unpleasant
predicament in which they are often placed. Corporeal punishment
ought to be abolished altogether; I am perfectly convinced it could
be done without. In many regiments we have strong proofs of the
allegation; and the fact, that where punishment is most frequent, the
men are the worst behaved, and _vice versa_, cannot be denied.
It cannot fail to humble a regiment to have one of their number
flogged, and it ruins the individual. No man who has prided himself
on his character, can look up after it: he bears a humiliating sense
of disgrace about him for ever after,—‘a worm that will not sleep,
and never dies.’ My character, he will say, is gone, I can never hold
up my head among my comrades; all prospect of promotion is lost to
me, for should my officers at any future period offer it, how could
I, who have been tied up, and my back lacerated before the gaze of
the whole regiment, ever feel confidence to command those who have
witnessed my disgrace, and to whom I have been an object of pity or
scorn, either of which is alike humiliating to a mind not entirely
callous.
Many may wonder at my warmth on this subject; but if they had,
like me, seen the dreadful extremity to which it was at one time
carried, they would cease to be surprised. Who that has ever seen a
man stripped before the gaze of a regiment, his limbs bound to the
halberts, and the knotted scourge lacerating his flesh, while the
surgeon stood by to measure by the pulse the amount of human agony
which the poor wretch could suffer, would ever wish to see it again?
The first man I saw flogged, received eight hundred lashes, for
desertion—it would have been more merciful to have shot him. But men
have been known to receive a thousand lashes before they were taken
down from the halberts; and on occasions where nature could not bear
the punishment awarded at once, they have been brought out again, and
again, to have their half-healed backs torn open afresh! They have
been known to faint under their punishment, and again be flogged into
life! On other occasions their agony was lengthened out by giving
the lash by tap of drum, allowing half a minute to elapse between
each tap, and when the mangled back was cut through the skin, and
the bare muscle quivered under the scourge, the only mercy extended
was to inflict the rest of the punishment on some other part of the
body! And yet all this was done under the eyes of people professing
Christianity and civilization—who were yearly inundating Parliament
with petitions against flogging negroes with a cart-whip—yes, while
the blood of their countrymen was sprinkling a barrack square, and
their cries were ringing in their ears! They saw it not—heard it
not—their feelings were too fine for aught but distant misery. The
groans of their tortured countrymen were given to the wind—no voice
was heard in their behalf—no arm was raised to save. Yes, there were
a few who vindicated the cause of insulted humanity, and they live
in the grateful remembrance of the soldier; but their efforts were
rendered ineffectual through the opposition of men whom I dare not
trust myself to speak about.
How individuals can be found to stand up in the senate of a free and
enlightened country, and vindicate this brutal and inhuman mode of
punishment, is an anomaly not easy to be accounted for.
Thank God! the times I have described are gone past—men cannot now
be treated in that manner without investigation; but still enough
remains to make us wish its abolition. Though flogging is now seldom
resorted to at home, I am afraid it is still too prevalent in our
colonies abroad, and may in a great degree cause that debasement of
mind, and habits of inebriation, which we observe in the generality
of those soldiers who have been stationed long in the East or West
Indies.
If any crime committed by a soldier in the army deserved corporeal
punishment, the individual should no longer be a member of it: after
such punishment, he ought to be discharged, as unworthy to be a
soldier. It may be argued that many would then commit crime, when
engaged in an unpleasant service, to get their freedom; but those
who would say so, know little of human nature. Most men who have any
character to uphold, consider disgrace worse than death; and if they
had witnessed, as I have done, the reluctance with which soldiers, in
general, left their regiment, when sick, even on the eve of battle,
and what anxiety they evinced to join, when restored to health, they
would think differently. Many schemers there are in a regiment,
certainly; but under any circumstances they would be useless
characters—there are drones in every hive. To inspire and cherish
the manly, honourable spirit I have described, it is only necessary
to treat men as if they possessed it. Soldiers have their failings,
and their prominent vices, it is true; but they generally lie on
the surface, and their neighbours in civil life have this advantage
of them, that they ‘have the better art of hiding;’ but in point of
disinterested feeling, and generosity of character, I question much
whether the soldier would lose by the comparison.
The besetting sin of the British soldier is drunkenness, (the parent
of many others,) produced, in a great measure, by the leisure
time which he has in general hanging on his hands. I am sorry the
only effectual cure for this has not been pushed to the necessary
length,—I mean urging the men to improve their minds, and affording
them the means, which would not only make them more useful soldiers,
but enable them to fill up their spare time with advantage to
themselves.
As an instance of this, there were a few of us in the habit, instead
of spending our idle time in the public-house, of walking down by
the river side, carrying our books with us, and alternately reading
and conversing. Some of our comrades who had been addicted to drink,
sometimes joined us for the sake of the walk; and from the pleasure
they derived from the conversation, and the new ideas awakened in
their minds, they voluntarily gave up their old habits, and became
converts to our system. We procured books on the various subjects
to which our attention was excited, and although not quite masters
of the subject, it would have surprised many people to have heard
our disquisitions on Natural Philosophy, History, &c. Music was a
favourite amusement also, and by forming small parties, we were never
at a loss to pass the time, and when on guard, (the most irksome
time to others,) we found it the most pleasant. Our number was not
great, certainly, but a little encouragement and countenance from our
officers might have done much. The detached situation of the regiment
often broke up our party, but still we cherished the germ of
intellectual improvement; and if I have in any way gained the start
of my comrades in this respect, it has been by my application while
in the army, for when I first entered it, my education was entirely
confined to the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I know there are men who look upon the increasing intelligence of
the lower classes of society with a fearful eye, considering it as
the precursor of revolution and anarchy. The man who thinks so, must
have a ‘worthless neivefu’ of a soul.’ Education, by improving the
understanding and ripening the judgment, leads men to see clearly
their own interest and follow it steadily, and of course will
always render them tractable to the existing government, where that
government is not tyrannical and unjust. None have any reason to fear
the spread of knowledge, but those whose actions loathe the light.