Martial Laws of England.—Limited Service advised.—Hints for Military Reform. The execution of Governor Wall is considered as a great triumph of justice. Nobody seems to recollect that he has been hanged, not for having flogged three men to death, but for an informality in the mode of doing it.—Yet this is the true state of the case. Had he called a drum-head court-martial, the same sentence might have been inflicted, and the same consequences have ensued, with perfect impunity to himself.
The martial laws of England are the most barbarous which at this day exist in Europe. The offender is sometimes sentenced 110to receive a thousand lashes;—a surgeon stands by to feel his pulse during the execution, and determine how long the flogging can be continued without killing him. When human nature can sustain no more, he is remanded to prison; his wound, for from the shoulders to the loins it leaves him one wound, is dressed, and as soon as it is sufficiently healed to be laid open again in the same manner, he is brought out to undergo the remainder of his sentence. And this is repeatedly and openly practised in a country where they read in their churches, and in their houses, that Bible, in their own language, which saith, “Forty stripes may the judge inflict upon the offender, and not exceed.”
All savages are cruel, and nations become humane only as they become civilized. Half a century ago, the most atrocious punishments were used in every part of Christendom;—such were the executions under Pombal in Portugal, the tortures inflicted upon Damiens in France; 111and the practice of opening men alive in England. Our own history is full of shocking examples, but our manners[8] softened sooner than those of our neighbours. These barbarities originated in barbarous ages, and are easily accounted for; but how so cruel a system of martial law, which certainly cannot be traced back to any distant age of antiquity, could ever have been established is unaccountable; for when barbarians established barbarous laws, the soldiers were the only people who were free; in fact, they were the legislators, and of course would never make laws to enslave themselves.
8.  More truly it might be said, that the Spaniards had no traitors to punish. In the foreign instances here stated, the judges made their court to the crown by cruelty;—in our own case, the cruelty was of the law, not of the individuals. Don Manuel also forgets the Inquisition.—Tr.
Another grievous evil in their military system is, that there is no limited time of 112service. Hence arises the difficulty which the English find in recruiting their armies. The bounty money offered for a recruit during the war amounted sometimes to as much as twenty pieces of eight, a sum, burthensome indeed to the nation when paid to whole regiments, but little enough if it be considered as the price for which a man sells his liberty for life. There would be no lack of soldiers were they enlisted for seven years. Half the peasantry in the country would like to wear a fine coat from the age of eighteen till five-and-twenty, and to see the world at the king’s expense. At present, mechanics who have been thrown out of employ by the war, and run-away apprentices, enlist in their senses, but the far greater number of recruits enter under the influence of liquor.
It has been inferred, that old Homer lived in an age when morality was little understood, because he so often observes, that it is not right to do wrong. Whether 113or not the same judgement is to be passed upon the present age of England, posterity will decide; certain it is that her legislators seem not unfrequently to have forgotten the commonest truisms both of morals and politics. The love of a military life is so general, that it may almost be considered as one of the animal passions; yet such are the martial laws, and such the military system of England, that this passion seems almost annihilated in the country. It is true, that during the late war volunteer companies were raised in every part of the kingdom; but, in raising these, the whole influence of the landed and moneyed proprietors was exerted; it was considered as a test of loyalty; and the greater par............