NOTES AND QUERIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume V, Issue 279, 4 July 1855, Page 5

NOTES AND QUERIES.

(From the Spectator.) Corporal punishment of some kind, whether with lash or other instrument, will probably always be retained in any army, as an absolute uecassity forjtellingJ ibe soldiers that there is a point at which mutinous resistance to authority must yield ; but that is poor, discipline,- poor coirmaiul, which relies upon cat, stick, or sword. Lord Raglan has shown that he can rely upon stronger influences. A young soldier having, in a state of intoxication, struck an officer and a sergeant, lie was sentenced to fifty lashes and twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour ; ami, says Lord Raglan in confirming the sentence, he was properly convicted and sentenced. But, in consideration of. his youth and inexperience, of his sorrow and contrition, the Ootnmauder-in-chiefsteps beyond that just punishment and pardons tiie youth ; " thus affording him an immediate opportunity of showing by his conduct that he is not unworthy of the lenity now extended to him."' Was this young man a monster, in his capacity for being reformed ? Li uot, might not the pardon be more

efficacious than the lash ? The returns of corporal punishment in the Navy for the first si? months of the last two years show a decline from 790 in the former period to 330 in the latter: half «f the punishment formerly inflicted is now considered unnecessary, and consequently mischievous. In twenty-four ships there were no returns of corporal punishment; aud it is remarked that many of the ships which returned " nil "in 1854 made the same return in 1855. Is the discipline in those ships worse than in the ott.ers? Is it equal? Ts it better? There is even something beyond discipline ; are the men in those ships |ess, or are they more willing, in the execution 'of their duty, less or more likely to act with vigour before "the enemy at the call of their officers? , Sir John Pakington wanted to know of Lord Palmerston, the other night, whether Lord John would soon return to England and the Colonial Office, to prevent that extreme public inconvenience which must result to departmental affairs from his protracted absence. The constitutions of Victoria and New South Wales hang upon consultations With Lord John ; and a delegate from Newfoundland has already waited upon three successive Colonial Ministers. Lord Palmerston answered, " There is, as the right hon. baronet well knows, a permanent Under-Seere-"tary and a permanent Assistant-Under-Secre-tarv ; the political Under-secretary is not yet named, but he will be appointed in a very short time." " Sir George Grey will continue to perform4he duties of the office, and no public inconvenience can arise from the temporary absei.ee of my noble friend." So (he chief duties can be patched up for a time. For is there not c< a permanent Under-Secretary and a permanent" Assistant Under-Seeretary ?" These are the men whose existence we have pointed out before, and to whose covert position, without Parliamentary Toponsibility, we alluded to last week. They do the business—political Secretary and Uuder-Se-cretary act as fenders or pads to soften the responsibility. Would it not be a better arrangement to do without these supernumerary, useless, aud responsibility-fending politicals—literally those old " buffers"— and deal direct with the permanent? It is the least advantage to say that it would save expense. Dr. William Roots revives the worn out ■question, whether officers in the army should wear "a distinctive garb "; and he is, he says, " induced to offer an opinion on the conlrary, from the recollection, that our greatly beloved and lamented Nelson in all probability lost his valuable life from the conspicuous figure he od'ered to the enemy when full-dressed in all his regimental honours." Wb.s Nelson, then, an officer in the Horse Marines?— The story itself on which Dr. Roots relies in the case of Nelson was set at rest as a fictitious fact some years ago. Is the passage of the Red Sea ever, to be opened to a ship-canal ? We now have the promise, we forget how many times repeated. M. Ferdinand de Lesseps actually has a firman from the Viceroy of Egypt; but how can the finnan of his Highness cut a channel through the broad shallows which form the .inproaches of the Mediterranean coastat the Isthmus of Suez? How can the most formal promise of Egypt insure "honest and hearty cooperation," as the firman phrases it? The rails for the ever-promised railway across the desert used to be [lying about, a mockery of the pretension which they were imported to sustain. It is curious that these two portals of the grent highways of the world, Suez and Panama, should be the scenes of such repealed promises of shipcanals, with so small a previous examination as to tlie means of fulfilling the promise. The last expedition to Central America, it is said, discovered gradients up which but few canals could ascend; and JI. de Lesseps has not yet waded through the shallows of Suez.