Chapter 36 - Page 2

memory of a by-gone terror, which he could at pleasure revive;
and that his sailors knew this, and hence their good behaviour
under a lenient sway. But, granting the quoted assertion to be
true, how comes it that many American Captains, who, after
inflicting as severe punishment as ever Collingwood could have
authorized--how comes it that _they_, also, have not been able to
maintain good order without subsequent floggings, after once
showing to the crew with what terrible attributes they were
invested? But it is notorious, and a thing that I myself, in
several instances, _know_ to have been the case, that in the
American navy, where corporal punishment has been most severe, it
has also been most frequent.

But it is incredible that, with such crews as Lord Collingwood's
--composed, in part, of the most desperate characters, the rakings
of the jails--it is incredible that such a set of men could have
been governed by the mere _memory_ of the lash. Some other
influence must have been brought to bear; mainly, no doubt, the
influence wrought by a powerful brain, and a determined, intrepid
spirit over a miscellaneous rabble.

It is well known that Lord Nelson himself, in point of policy,
was averse to flogging; and that, too, when he had witnessed the
mutinous effects of government abuses in the navy--unknown in our
times--and which, to the terror of all England, developed
themselves at the great mutiny of the Nore: an outbreak that for
several weeks jeopardised the very existence of the British navy.

But we may press this thing nearly two centuries further back,
for it is a matter of historical doubt whether, in Robert Blake's
time, Cromwell's great admiral, such a thing as flogging was
known at the gangways of his victorious fleets. And as in this
matter we cannot go further back than to Blake, so we cannot
advance further than to our own time, which shows Commodore
Stockton, during the recent war with Mexico, governing the
American squadron in the Pacific without employing the scourge.

But if of three famous English Admirals one has abhorred
flogging, another almost governed his ships without it, and to
the third it may be supposed to have been unknown, while an
American Commander has, within the present year almost, been
enabled to sustain the good discipline of an entire squadron in
time of war without having an instrument of scourging on board,
what inevitable inferences must be drawn, and how disastrous to
the mental character of all advocates of navy flogging, who may
happen to be navy officers themselves.

It cannot have escaped the discernment of any observer of
mankind, that, in the presence of its conventional inferiors,
conscious imbecility in power often