ABSTRACT
Mr. Manners Sutton rose [in the House of Commons] and said, that seeing an Honourable Baronet (Sir F. Burdett) in his place, he should call the attention of the House to the circumstances of a case of military punishment which the Honourable Baronet had some time ago spoken of, as having been related in The Carlisle Journal. The facts then stated by the Honourable Baronet were, as far as he recollected them, that a private in the Dragoons had married without leave; that for this he had been sentenced to receive corporal punishment; that for this he received a part of his sentence, and under the apprehension that he should receive the remainder, had committed suicide. Now the facts asserted in the statement of The Carlisle Journal, which he should call a libel on the Army, were incorrect. He had made inquiries on the subject, and had received a detailed account of the circumstances of the case:—A private in the 13th Dragoons, stationed at Carlisle, had asked the consent of his Commanding Officer to marry, and had been refused. It was not to be understood by this, that if a soldier wished to marry, it was necessary that he should have the consent of his Commanding Officer, or that he would commit a military crime by marrying without that consent; but as the accommodations in barracks for the wives of soldiers were limited, it was necessary the Officer should have a power of preventing annoyance to the respectable women who were in that situation, by the introduction of others of a different description. But in this case it was not merely on this account that the Officer refused his consent, but it was because the man was married already. In a short time after the man absented himself without leave for some days, in the course of which time he was married. When he returned he was tried by a Brigade Court-martial, and sentenced to receive 200 lashes—100 lashes were inflicted on him, and the remainder were remitted him. Some days after he was found drowned, and the probability was that he had committed suicide. These were the facts in the official return; but to do justice to the Officer who commanded the corps in question, he should read a letter from Sir John Byng, the Commander in Chief in the Northern District.
