amongst the roughest of the roughs, a man
who had the marks of the cat upon his
shoulders was never respected, and never could
have any authority over the others, were he
promoted to be a non-commissioned officer.
And yet, strange to say, no matter what
crime a soldier has committed, so soon as it
is known he is to be flogged every other
man in the regiment pities him. I have
seen some hundred men tied up to the
triangles in my day, many of them for offences
repugnant to their comrades. But no sooner is
the culprit brought forward, and told to strip to
the waist for punishment, than he becomes a
martyr. I never heard a soldier say that a
man was rightly served, even if flogged for that
worst of all crimes in the eyes of soldiers—
stealing from a comrade.

Long after the power of inflicting three
hundred lashes by sentence of a general court-
martial was abolished, and when, as now,
no soldier could be sentenced to more than
fifty lashes, a relative of mine told me of
what happened in a cavalry regiment stationed
in Ireland, in which he then held the rank of
captain. The sergeant-major of his troop was,
for the rank he held, a comparatively young
man. Here and there, in crack cavalry regiments,
gentlemen's sons are to be met with in
the ranks; this man's father had been a
clergyman, who had died without being able to
provide for his family. He had been brought
up at an excellent grammar school, and had even
kept two terms at Oxford, when his father's
death left him, not only without means, but two
or three hundred pounds in debt. He enlisted
in a light dragoon regiment, and became a great
favourite with the commanding officer, the
adjutant, and the riding-master. In six or seven
years he had gone through the subordinate
ranks, and was promoted to be troop sergeant-
major, and was looking forward with great hope
to getting a commission at some future day.
The captain of his troop—my relation who told
me the tale—was summoned to England
to see his father, who had met with a very
severe accident in the hunting-field. He
started at once, and, as the officer who was to
take charge of his troop during his absence
was away, in order to save time he handed (as
he thought) fifty pounds of troop money to
the man in question to hand over to that other
officer who would succeed him in the temporary
command. My relative was a most careful man
in money matters, and, on principle, never
allowed his troop sergeant-major to have more
money in hand than was requisite for the wants
of the day; as he feared that the temptation
to gamble, or otherwise appropriate the funds,
might prove too strong. The officer who had
to take charge of the troop did not rejoin head-
quarters for two or three days, and after he
arrived, a day or two intervened before he made
up the accounts with the sergeaut-major. "When
he did so, behold ten pounds missing! The
subject of my story never attempted to
conceal the fact. His statement was, that
when my relative went on leave in such a
hurry, he had taken the money from him, but
without counting it, and had marked down fifty
pounds in the ledger. Since then he had taken
from the amount such money as he required to
pay the troop, all of which was correct to a
fraction in his book; but ten pounds he could
not account for. If the officer who took charge
of the troop had been a man of sense, he would
have let the matter stand over until my relative
returned. Unfortunately, however, he told the
man to consider himself under arrest, and
reported the affair to a greater donkey than
himself—the major of the regiment—who, in the
absence of the colonel, happened to be in
command. If the major had been an officer fit for
his position, he would have made personal
inquiry, and would have written to my relative,
asking whether he was quite certain that he had
paid over fifty pounds, and not forty pounds,
when he went away? Unfortunately in the
English service it is nine thousand pounds, and
not merit, that gets a cavalry majority. This
major would never, had he been a poor man,
have been entrusted with charge of half a dozen
labourers, so great a fool was he, and so utterly
wanting in common sense. Yet here he was,
in command of a splendid cavalry regiment,
consisting of four hundred men and as many horses,
and a very few years afterwards—by virtue of
some three thousand pounds more—he
commanded the corps permanently. He reported the
affair as a most grievous offence to the general
commanding, and in a very few days the man
was tried by a garrison court-martial, sentenced
to be reduced to the ranks, to be put under
stoppages until the ten pounds was made good,
and to receive fifty lashes in the usual manner.

The punishment was carried out to the full,
and, twenty-four hours after it had been inflicted,
a letter arrived from my relative saying he had
only just heard that the man was suspected of
taking the money, for his letters had been
following him from place to place. He begged the
major commanding to release the man from
arrest, as he, my relative, had discovered, on his
arrival in London, that he had paid his troop
sergeant-major ten pounds too little. Had the
man been sentenced to imprisonment, he could,
of course, have come out of confinement without
disgrace. As it was, he never held up his
head again. When the colonel returned, he was
very angry at what had happened, and at once
promoted him to be corporal, and the next day
to be sergeant. My relative, too, upon his
rejoining, tried hard to cheer up his former
sergeant-major, but the latter replied, "I know you
are not to blame, captain; but I am now a
branded man. If I live to be a hundred, and
ever strip in the presence of any one, the scars
on my back will be seen." This young soldier
had never formerly been known to take more
than a glass or two of ale in the day, and had
never even been suspected of drinking. His
brother sergeants said they had never seen him
take spirits. But, from the day he was flogged,
took to drinking so hard, that, though out