In former days (and I may go back even to the days of Marlborough) captains were men of some importance, and were allowed to exercise much more authority over their companies, than has for many years past been the fashion. They could keep them at drill, or confined to barracks, or camp, if their conduct was irregular, till the offenders were found out, and punished by the soldiers themselves. These offenders were tried by what were then called Company Courts-Martial, which consisted of a non-commissioned officer and four privates. The sentence (nothing else being written) having been approved of by the captain, or officer commanding the company, it was in presence of the non-commissioned officers, and sometimes of a subaltern, privately carried into execution, either by the drummers of the company giving the culprit a certain number of blows, or else all the soldiers had to do so with the slings of their firelocks. This having been properly, and often severely done by _themselves_, the company was considered as purified, and were then dismissed from drill, or released from confinement to barracks or camp. If a plan of this kind in spirit was properly followed up, how admirably it would be found calculated for service in the field even in our days. When the importance of company officers is raised, so is proportionally that of the non-commissioned officers; and does not the superiority of our companies of guards consist in the respectability of their non-commissioned officers? Not very long ago, what, I believe, was called Picketting, was practised as a punishment in our regiments of cavalry for minor offences, and I have heard from old officers, that the soldiers had a great dread of it; they assured me it did not in the least injure their health, or unfit them for immediate duty; and it almost entirely obviated the necessity for flogging. Would it not therefore be well, if the reviving of this kind of punishment in every corps, when an army took the field, were to have due consideration. I am aware of the outcry which most likely would be raised by injudicious men against such a plan, and nothing would have induced me to venture to mention it, but my abhorrence of flogging, and my fear that capital punishments might become frequent and unavoidable, if there were no other mode, of maintaining discipline amongst our troops. I therefore must not shrink from suggesting it, as I feel convinced, that in the field, our military police, might be safely trusted with the power of using it as a punishment; and it would, I have no doubt, deter soldiers from straggling from their corps in search of liquor or plunder.