savages who were only striving to maintain | moralizing punishment of flogging; but their right to certain tracts of land which he was determined to invite attention to they claimed as their own. If the public the matter, because out-of-doors a strong only knew the amount of money which feeling existed on the subject. The fathey had been called on to pay during the vourite argument in favour of the system last twenty years for destroying savage na- was, that it was necessary to the maintions, they would be very much astonished. tenance of discipline; but would Gentlemen These wars brought upon us undoubted undertake to say that the discipline of disgrace; and he could not see how we the English army was superior to that of could hope to gain either honour or advan- the French and Austrian? Yet, in the tage from them. armies of those two countries the system of corporal punishment was unknown. He would assert that the discipline of the Austrian army was equal, if not superior, to that of the British army. If it were necessary to retain this punishment, there ought always to be sufficient reason for inflicting it. Now, according to the wording of the clause, flogging might be inflicted for disgraceful conduct, for misbehaviour, or for neglect of duty. Now, what was "misbehaviour?" According to a Return in the course of the year 1862 nearly 35,000 lashes had been inflicted in the navy, and 5,999 in the army. Was it possible that the services could be in such a state of insubordination as to require the infliction of nearly 50,000 lashes in a single year?

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON believed that the Vote would completely settle the accounts between the War Office and the Indian Government up to 1861. As to the cost of the New Zealand war, he had stated the other evening that, as compared with the Estimates of 1863-4, a sum of about £300,000 in the amount taken for next year was attributable to that cause. He had added, however, that that would not be the whole cost of the war, and that he thought the sum of £500,000 would be thus expended.

Vote agreed to.
House resumed.

Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.
Committee to sit again To-morrow.

"That in the captain's but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy." And, accordingly, one man had been sentenced to receive forty lashes for "bad language.' ." If the same severe justice were meted out to Members of the House of Commons, how many of them would 'scape whipping?

Was it right to punish a civilian for theft by two or three months' imprisonment, and to give a soldier forty or fifty lashes for a similar offence? Was it consistent to sympathize with the Federal States, because they were free from the reproach of using the lash, and to raise our voice against the employment of the knout in Russia, while we perpetuated in our own services a system which was at once a disgrace to them and to civilization? He felt quite sure that, whatever might be the decision of the House now or next Session, public feeling eventually would make itself felt in a manner not to be mistaken. Were the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in his place, he could corroborate the statement that there was not

a single meeting at the last election for the borough of Southwark at which disapprobation was not loudly manifested of this disgusting and degrading punishment. He would, therefore, move the omission of Clause 22.

MR. W. WILLIAMS seconded the Mo- | That was rather encouraging to those who tion. He was unable to see why flogging now thought that that mode of punishment should be necessary in the British service, might be altogether dispensed with without when in some of the largest armies in the inconvenience. He wished particularly to world, the French, the Austrian, and call the attention of the Under Secretary American, it had been abolished. His for War to the state of the case in India. own belief was, that discipline might be There the Asiatics who composed the Native maintained without it. army, and who had for generations been governed by the lash, were exempted from all flogging; and the service had got on as well without it as with it, if not better. It was a remarkable fact that the regiments at Madras and Bombay, in which there was

At the same time, the British soldier was still subject to the degrading punishment from which the Native had been relieved. He had been told that the result was most disastrous in regard to the relations between the two classes of soldiery, and that the Natives pointed the finger of scorn at the Englishman who was amenable to the lash. That was not a state of things which ought to be tolerated in India; and if flogging were abolished among all the troops there, it could not be retained elsewhere. It had better, therefore, be done away with at once and altogether.

COLONEL NORTH said, that nothing was more easy than to gain hustings popularity by declamations against flogging; but he could tell hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the officers of the army would be greatly obliged to them if they would sug-no flogging, behaved well during the mutiny. gest some effective mode of punishment in lieu of it. Nobody felt more repugnance to the use of the lash than the officers themselves. But the great difficulty was to punish a man effectually, and, at the same time, not to keep him too long from the performance of his duties. Many a lazy blackguard would as soon be in gaol as out of it; so that mere imprisonment would never do. Reference had been made to the usage in foreign armies. Why, in France, they shot where we flogged. Would the English public like their soldiers to be shot in that way? In Prussia they had a torture chamber, the floor of which was composed of angles, arranged in such a way that a prisoner could neither sit nor stand at ease, and the punishment was so severe that offenders could not be retained there for long at a time, but were taken out for a little while and then put back again. The non-commissioned officers carried sticks, and the officers could inflict a certain number of cuts upon the private soldiers at their own discretion. In our army, it should be remembered, that a flogging could be inflicted only on the sentence of a court-martial. British officers were always very sorry to have to enforce this punishment, and he was surprised to hear hon. Members talk as though they imagined it was a personal gratification to the officers to see a man under the lash.

COLONEL NORTH observed, that the question was not now as to a reduction of the amount of punishment by flogging, but as to dispensing with it altogether; and he repeated that those who were in favour of such a course ought to suggest a substitute for flogging. He repeated that it was no pleasure for an officer to have a man flogged, for there was no truer affection to be found than that which existed between the British soldier and his officers.

MR. WHITE said, he had several times brought this question before the House, and he now renewed his protest against a mode of punishment so degrading, so repugnant to common decency, so cruel, and un-Christian. The hon. and gallant Member (Colonel North) said it was only by flogging that discipline could be maintained. [Colonel NORTH: No !] Well, it MR. AYRTON said, that formerly cor- was the belief of the gallant Colonel that poral punishment was inflicted to the extent the soldier could be deterred from certain not of fifty, but of 500 and 1,000 lashes; crimes only by that means. That, howand when complaint was made on the sub- ever, was not the opinion of some distinject, the stereotyped answer was just what guished military authorities. He was sorry the hon. and gallant Member had given his gallant Friend the Member for Westthat discipline must be maintained. In minster (Sir De Lacy Evans) was not in consequence, however, of repeated remon- his place to speak for himself; but he might strances in the House, the thousand lashes refer to him as having long been opposed were reduced to fifty as a maximum, and to the use of the lash. [Colonel NORTH : it had not been found that the discipline of Quite the contrary!] He could only say the army had suffered from the change. that his hon. and gallant Friend had him

self told him so, and that he gave evidence | American army. He should be very much to that effect before a Committee of the surprised if the House of Commons did House. not require our army to be kept under somewhat sterner discipline than that which existed in America; nor was he certain that if hon. Members inquired they would not find that in the American army it had beenfound necessary to resort to very severe punishments to check mutiny and desertion. He was certain that British officers would not advocate the retention of this punishment if they did not think that it was necessary, and he believed that it was the wish of all of them to inflict corporal punishment as seldom as possible. He did not think that it could be said that the liability to the lash was a degradation to the soldier. Hon. Members must recollect that by recent legislations civilians had been made liable to the same punishment; and, though he might be told that he paid the army a bad compliment by comparing soldiers with garotters, it must not be forgotten that no man in the army was liable to be flogged unless he had by repeated and serious offences proved himself to be a man of bad character.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON said, that some hon. Members had spoken as though it was the opinion of British officers that the army could only be governed by the lash; but a little reflection would show them that it was not so-the conclusion was contradicted by the smallness of the part which the lash played in the government of the army. What he understood to be the opinion of the most experienced officers was that there was a class of men in the army-and it must be remembered that we did not recruit our army from the most respectable classes, but took a good many of the most degraded-who were nearly insensible to every sort of punishment except that of the lash. When this subject was discussed in 1860, Lord Herbert, then Mr. Herbert, entered very fully into the reasons which, in his opinion, rendered it necessary to the discipline of the army that the punishment of flogging should be retained; and he was sure that hon. Gentlemen would agree with him that there must have been a very stern conviction of the necessity which made such a man as the late Lord Herbert speak so emphatically as he did of the necessity of retaining corporal punishment. Hon. Members who had taken part in this debate appeared to have forgotten a very salutary change which had been introduced during the last few years, according to which no man was liable to be flogged, except for grave offences of a mutinous nature, until he had for previous bad conduct been degraded into the second class. He was happy to say that the Returns showed that, of late years, the total number of floggings in the army had materially decreased. In 1858 the number was 218 in the army in Great Britain and Ireland, and 13 in the militia; he had not been able to find the Return for 1859; in 1860 the number of men flogged was 179; in 1861, 168; and in 1862, 126. If these Returns did not prove much, they at least showed that officers were not inclined to flog more than they could help. Hon. Members had referred to the discipline of other armies as being maintained without flogging; but he believed that in most of the European armies the punishments were more severe than our own, and that in many cases where we flogged they would shoot a man. Some hon. Members had mentioned the

MR. BASS said, that both the noble Marquess and the gallant Officer the Member for Oxfordshire (Colonel North), had maintained that the discipline of a large part of the army was independent of the lash. Why, then, should not the lash be done away with altogether? The noble Lord said that there was a class of offenders in the army who were so abandoned that they were insensible to any punishment but that which was only fit for brutes; and the gallant Colonel asked the House to suggest a remedy for that evil. He said, "Get rid of such men altogether." That was what had to be done with them at last. We heard every day of men being drummed out of regiments because they were so abandoned and worthless as to be no longer fit to associate with human kind, and he suggested that that should be done before flogging them, instead of afterwards. The army was mainly composed of men of high spirit and great bravery, and why should they be degraded by having to associate with men who could only be classed with felons. Men who could only be kept in order by the lash should be turned out of the army at once.

COLONEL NORTH said, that the only means of avoiding the necessity for having this bad class of men in the army would be to double or treble the pay of the

soldier; and he should like to see what in a force which was recruited from the the house would say if they were asked to higher class than the rest of the armyvote the pay of the privates at the rate of namely, the Royal Artillery. An artillery2s. 6d. a day. Was there no flogging in man possessed a considerable amount of gaols? Why, if he was in command of education. Many of the Artillery were a regiment in the City of Oxford he could drawn from a class superior to the rest of not flog a man without holding a court- the army. ["No!"] Did hon. Gentlemen martial upon him; but if he took off his mean to say that the Artillery, as a body, red coat and went into the gaol he could, were not superior to common soldiers? as a visiting magistrate, order a man to be flogged without any trial.