254 MAJOR WYNDHAM AND THE CAT. 



of invasion, but in furtherance of any military project which may be 

 ordered by a government duly chosen by the people. But the British 

 army must never forget, that their paramount and most sacred duties 

 are those of citizens; and that no enlistment, no oath, no obligation, 

 however solemn, can release them from the duty they owe to the civil 

 laws. Let them but keep this truth in mind, and they may rest assured 

 that military tyranny can never be stretched to that length which would 

 deprive them of the original rights they possessed before they became 

 soldiers, as the birth-right of the free-born. Nevertheless, unfortu- 

 nately, the people of England, both civil and military, from ill-founded 

 notions, have been led to suppose that the service of war takes a man 

 out of the pale of the common law ; that it frees him from civil obli- 

 gations and restraint, substituting other regulations for his conduct : 

 that it makes him a new man ; in short, that (like the monks of old, 

 when taking their vows) he is to be considered, when devoting himself 

 to war, as dead to all civil purposes, and born again, as it were, by mili- 

 tary baptism. 



Herein has been the great error, against which we have hitherto 

 knocked our unconscious heads, whenever military thoughts have been 

 obtruded upon our commercial minds. Owing to this fallacious view of 

 the question, (a view which has been fostered and encouraged on every 

 possible occasion by the generality of commissioned officers,) many in- 

 stances of wrong and oppression that have taken place in the army and 

 navy, and to which the public attention has scarcely been called, have 

 passed over without examination nay, almost without a thought, on 

 the part of the people and wherein tyranny has consequently escaped 

 obloquy and punishment : and, what is worse, wherein innocent and 

 brave men have been branded with the stain of mutiny that word of 

 awful sound to military ears degraded, flogged, or rather flayed, almost 

 to death's door, and ignominiously pronounced incapable of again serv- 

 ing their country. 



The reader is already aware, that Alexander Somerville, a private in 

 the regiment of Scots Greys, was lately arraigned on a charge of disobe- 

 dience of orders ; or, in other words, for what the law military styles 

 mutiny. He is tried by the usual regimental court-martial, found 

 guilty, and sentenced to receive a most outrageously severe puuishment. 



What then are the facts of the case ? Somerville is a raw recruit, and 

 is ordered, amongst others, to take a lesson in the riding-school. He 

 does so, when he finds himself mounted on a horse that he cannot 

 manage. He dismounts, and is commanded by his superior to remount. 

 He demurs, on the plea of his inability to do so without the greatest 

 personal danger. The command is repeated, and he then absolutely 

 refuses to obey it. We admit that this is insubordination ; but we 

 deny, according to all acknowledged notions of civilised justice, that 

 either the character or the degree of disobedience is such as to warrant 

 the infliction of corporeal punishment, even allowing that corporeal 

 punishment is warranted in any case. 



Within two or three hours after the act of insubordination, he is put 

 upon his trial; and, in the midst of all the warmth of feeling, which 

 may be supposed to have actuated a council of officers towards the 

 offender, in a case so recently occurring, wherein the orders of a supe- 

 rior had been disobeyed, he is declared a fitting subject to undergo the 

 infliction of no Jess than 200 lashes! 



