In the mean time the smaller fry are being dealt with by the Military Commission, under whose orders eleven prisoners have been hanged. The order of procedure is that the case against men under arrest is fully gone into by Colonel Macgregor, aided by Hyat Khan; and when the evidence and witnesses are ready, the prisoners are “committed,” so to say, to the Commission, just as in ordinary criminal inquiries they would be passed from the Police Magistrate to the Assize Judge. There is no unseemly hurry or vindictive haste displayed in the inquiry. All goes on systematically and deliberately; and before the Commission the men under arrest are allowed to hear all that has been stated against them and to give such explanation as they desire. If there then appears new matter for inquiry, they are remanded from day to day; and no effort is spared, in common fairness to them, to test the truth of their statements. If found guilty, they are condemned to death; but even then the sentence is not carried out without reference to a third source of authority—that of Sir Frederick Roberts himself. If he approves the finding, he signs the order for execution, and the Provost-Marshal has then to fulfil the duty of his office without delay. But if there seem doubtful points strong enough to be yet a third time considered, the sentence of death is held in suspense; and even now we have in our quarter-guards men in this stage, with the halter dangling before their eyes. It will be seen that nothing can be fairer than the course taken by Sir Frederick Roberts to punish such as deserve death for their past actions in the early weeks of September; and in the face of it there is none of that reckless blood-spilling which we may get the credit for. In our Assize the old line—
“And wretches hang that jurymen may dine—”
is unknown: and if there is grumbling occasionally at the pains taken to convict prisoners instead of hanging them on mere suspicion, it is all the more creditable to our Chief and his Commissioners that no attention is paid to it. To-day two men were marched off to execution who richly deserved their fate. The one was the _jemadar_ of the rascally Kotwal of Cabul, himself hanged on the 20th. Like the Kotwal, he was most servile in offering aid to us _after_ our arrival, and, on the night of the 8th, acted as a guide to some troops marching up the Bala Hissar Ridge, in connection with the action against the rebels on that day. The second prisoner was a Mahomedan resident of Cabul, in whose house a box, marked “Cabul Embassy,” was found by a searching party of the 28th Regiment. He could give no explanation of how he came by the box, except the colourless one that it had been placed in his rooms by an enemy. Several guns and swords were also found in his house; and, nothing in his favour being forthcoming, he was sent to execution. The guilt or innocence of the confidential friends of Yakub Khan, who are now prisoners, is still a question of doubt; but none are arrested without justification, and their cases will undergo the usual scrutiny.