Page:Earl Canning.djvu/156

150 all persons suspected of desertion or mutiny. These powers, as was inevitable, had been freely and sometimes indiscriminately used. In July, accordingly, the Governor-General issued a Resolution for the instruction of these tribunals, indicating the lines of distinction which, with a view to justice and the ultimate pacification of the country, officials should observe in dealing with various classes of suspects brought before them. Many soldiers in regiments which had mutinied had shown no sympathy with the movement, but had gone quietly to their homes. To hang such men as mutineers after a summary trial was needless and cruel severity. Instructions were, accordingly, given that the civil tribunals were, for the future, to deal only with such deserters as were found with arms in their possession, or were charged with specific acts of rebellion, or belonged to regiments which had murdered their officers or committed other murderous outrage. All other deserters were to be made over to the military authorities for regular trial. The petition treated these directions as 'tantamount to an amnesty to all mutineers except those who had taken an active part in the murder of their officers or others;' and denounced such leniency as 'misplaced, impolitic, and iniquitous,' as calculated to 'excite contempt and invite attack by exhibiting the Government as so powerless to punish mutiny, or so indifferent to the sufferings of its victims, as to dispense with adequate retribution,' and as thus tending to a prolongation of the struggle. It is a curious instance