Major-General Bell, as might be expected, was not satisfied with such a reply. He instituted a military Court of Inquiry, consisting of Colonel Le Mesurier, Captain Cockburn, and Captain Clerk, with instructions “to ascertain whether any person or persons, belonging to the garrison, were engaged in firing with ball, within or immediately adjoining Longy Lines, on the day and within the hours specified in several of the documents laid before them.” It was not till the evening of the second day on which this court had sat, that Captain Douglas seems to have had his eyes opened to the perilous manner in which he was compromising himself. On the evening of that day, he wrote a letter to Judge Gaudion, stating the whole and simple truth with regard to this pistol-firing; and the next morning, he repeated the same statement before the military Court of Inquiry. The confession, it seems, came too late to save him from the consequences of his unwise, needless, and pertinacious concealment of an act in itself perfectly innocent. It was thought a case sufficiently grave to bring before a court-martial.[3] It will be seen and acknowledged at once, that we have not attempted to screen Captain Douglas from the degree of blame which an impartial judge would throw upon his conduct. If the court-martial had reprimanded Captain Douglas, we should have thought the penalty sufficiently severe, but neither we, nor perhaps others, would have been disposed to dispute the propriety of the sentence, or, at least, to call public attention to the case. But, for this offence, the court has sentenced Captain Douglas to be _cashiered_! This sentence—to enter now upon our second topic—is not only cruelly severe, it is illegal, it is unjust. Our readers need not fear that we are about to involve them in the technicalities of jurisprudence. It is no technical matter we have to deal with, but broad principles of justice. Mr Warren has, indeed, raised a class of legal objections against the verdict of the court-martial, grounded on its refusal to admit certain evidence. On these objections we shall not enter. To us it appears that the president of the court exercised his power in this matter, in general, very discreetly. But, on these objections, we wish it to be understood that we give no opinion. We pass at once to what we deem a fatal error in this verdict—an error, not of form, but of substance; an error which constitutes it to be an _unjust judgment_. Captain Douglas was tried upon the following charge,—“for conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman.” Of such conduct he was found guilty. Now, the article of war under which he was arraigned, and the only one under which his offence, by any fair interpretation, could fall, is the 80th, and runs thus:—“Any officer who shall behave _in a scandalous, infamous manner_, unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, shall, on conviction thereof before a general court-martial, be CASHIERED.”[4]