INTRODUCTION.

AN opinion had for some years begun to prevail among political reasoners, and had found its way also into the army, that the punishment of flogging, to which our troops alone of all the European soldiery are subject, was cruel in its nature, hurtful to the military character in its effects, and ill calculated to attain the great ends of all penal infliction, the reformation of the offender, and the prevention of other offences by the force of example. Several tracts had been published, chiefly by military officers, in which the subject was discussed; and among these the pamphlets of Generals Money, Stewart, and Sir Robert Wilson, were the most distinguished, both for their own merits, and the rank and services of their authors, who had never borne any part in political controversy, or in as far as they had been led by accidental circumstances to declare their opinions, had been found the supporters of the old established order of things in all its branches. In 1810, Mr. Cobbett, who having himself served in North America, had witnessed the effects of this species of punishment, and had naturally a strong respect for the character of the profession, published some strictures on the subject in his Political Register. That work enjoyed in those days a great circulation and influence. It always was one of extraordinary ability, and distinguished by a vigorous and generally pure English style; but it was disfigured by coarseness, and rendered a very unsafe guide by the

author's violent prejudices,—his intolerance of all opinions but his own, and indeed his contempt of all persons but himself, his habitual want of fairness towards his adversaries, his constant disregard of facts in his statements, and the unblushing changes which he made in his opinions upon things, from extreme to extreme, and in his comments upon men, from the extravagance of praise to the excess of vituperation. These great defects, above all, the want of any fixed system of settled principle, almost entirely destroyed his influence as a periodical writer, and extremely reduced the circulation of his paper, long before his death and its discontinuance, which were contemporaneous; he having for the unexampled period of five and thirty years carried on this weekly publication unassisted by any one, although he was interrupted by his removal to America, whence he transmitted it regularly for several years, and was likewise both hampered by difficulties arising out of farming speculations, and occupied occasionally by several other literary works. But in 1810 his weight with the public had suffered little if any diminution, and a very large number of his Register was printed. The strictures on flogging were not distinguished by any of Mr. Cobbett's higher qualities of writing. They were a mere effusion of virulence upon the occasion of a punishment having taken place in the local militia of Ely. They were addressed not to the understanding nor even to the feelings of the reader; but rather to those of the soldiery who suffered the infliction, and of the bystanders who witnessed it; their tone and terms being, "You well deserve to be treated like brutes, if by submitting to it you show yourselves to be brutes."

Such was the spirit in which the few remarks in question were conceived; and indeed this was their substance, although these were not the words employed. According to the notions in those days entertained of the law of libel, it could excite no surprise that the

government prosecuted the author and publisher; Sir Vicary Gibbs, then Attorney-General, having frequently filed informations for remarks, as calm and temperate as these were coarse and violent. Mr. Cobbett was accordingly brought to trial in the month of June, 1810. He defended himself; and appearing then for the first time before a public audience, exhibited a new but by no means a rare example of the difference between writing and speaking; for nothing could be more dull and unimpressive than his speech, nothing less clear and distinct than its reasoning, more feeble than its style, or more embarrassed and inefficient than its delivery. The writer and the speaker could hardly be recognized as the same individual,-such is the effect of embarrassment, or such the influence of manner. But he afterwards defended himself in 1820 against actions brought by private parties whom he had slandered; and then, having by practice during the interval acquired considerable ease of speaking, his appearance was more than respectable, it was very effective. His style was also abundantly characteristic and racy; it had great originality, it suited the man,-it possessed nearly all the merits of his written productions, and it was set off by a kind of easy, good-humoured, comic delivery, with no little archness both of look and phrase, that made it clear he was a speaker calculated to take with a popular assembly out of doors, and by no means certain that he would not succeed even in the House of Commons; where when he afterwards came, he certainly did not fail, and would have had very considerable success had he entered it at an earlier age. In 1810 he was convicted (as in 1820, he had verdicts with heavy damages against him), and his sentence was a fine of £1,000, and two years' imprisonment in Newgate;-a punishment which may well make us doubt if we now, seeing the productions of the periodical press, live in the same country and under the same system of laws.

In the month of August immediately following, the subject was taken up by a writer of great powers, the late Mr. John Scott, who afterwards conducted a weekly paper, published in London, called the Champion. He was honourably distinguished by several literary works, and unfortunately fell in a duel, occasioned by some observations upon a gentleman whose conduct had come in question. In 1810 he was a contributor to the Stamford News, a Lincolnshire paper, distinguished for its constant adherence to the cause of civil and religious liberty. Its publisher, Mr. John Drakard, was a person of great respectability, and showed at once his high sense of honour, and his devotion to his principles, by steadily refusing to give up the author's name, when menaced with a prosecution. These remarks of Mr. Scott were soon afterwards copied into the Examiner, a London paper, then conducted by Messrs. J. and J. L. Hunt; and the Attorney-General filed informations both against them, for the publication in London, and against Mr. Drakard, for the original publication in the country, a species of vindictive proceeding not without its effect in bringing all state prosecutions for libel soon afterwards into a degree of discredit which has led to their disuse. The remarks were as follow:

"ONE THOUSAND LASHES!!"

"The aggressors were not dealt with as Buonaparte would have treated his refractory troops."-SPEECH OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

"Corporal Curtis was sentenced to receive ONE THOUSAND LASHES, but, after receiving Two Hundred, was, on his own petition, permitted to volunteer into a regiment on foreign service. William Clifford, a private in the 7th royal veteran battalion, was lately sentenced to receive ONE THOUSAND LASHES, for repeatedly striking and kicking his superior officer. He underwent part of his sentence, by receiving seven hundred and fifty lashes, at Canterbury, in presence of the whole garrison. A garrison court-martial has been held on board the Metcalf transport, at Spithead, on some men of the fourth regiment of foot, for disrespectful be

haviour to their officers. Two THOUSAND AND SIX HUNDRED LASHES were to be inflicted among them. Robert Chilman, a private in the Bearstead and Malling regiment of local militia, who was lately tried by a court-martial for disobedience of orders, and mutinous and improper behaviour, while the regiment was embodied, has been found guilty of all the charges, and sentenced to receive EIGHT HUNDRED LASHES, which are to be inflicted on him at Chatham, to which garrison he is to be marched for that purpose."-London Newspapers.

"The Attorney-General said what was very true,—these aggressors have certainly not been dealt with as Buonaparte would have treated his refractory troops; nor, indeed, as refractory troops would be treated in any civilized country whatever, save and except only this country. Here alone, in this land of liberty, in this age of refinement, by a people who, with their usual consistency, have been in the habit of reproaching their neighbours with the cruelty of their punishment,-is still inflicted a species of torture, at least as exquisite as any that was ever devised by the infernal ingenuity of the Inquisition. No, as the Attorney-General justly says, Buonaparte does not treat his refractory troops in this manner; there is not a man in his ranks whose back is seamed with the lacerating cat-o'-ninetails; his soldiers have never yet been brought up to view one of their comrades stripped naked; his limbs tied with ropes to a triangular machine; his back torn to the bone by the merciless cutting whipcord, applied by persons who relieve each other at short intervals, that they may bring the full unexhausted strength of a man to the work of scourging. Buonaparte's soldiers have never yet with tingling ears listened to the piercing screams of a human creature so tortured; they have never seen the blood oozing from his rent flesh; they have never beheld a surgeon, with dubious look, pressing the agonized victim's pulse, and calmly calculating, to an odd blow, how far suffering may be extended, until in its extremity it encroach upon life. In short, Buonaparte's soldiers cannot form any notion of that most heart-rending of all exhibitions on this side hell,-an English military flogging.

"Let it not be supposed that we intend these remarks to excite a vague and indiscriminating sentiment against punishment by military law; no, when it is considered that discipline forms the soul of an army, without which it would at once degenerate into a mob; when the description of persons which compose the body of what is called an army, and the situations in which it is frequently placed, are also taken into account, it will, we are afraid, appear but too evident, that the military