violating the law, by delegating the power of the colt
to subordinates. At all events, it is certain that, almost to a man,
the Lieutenants in the Navy bitterly rail against the officiousness of
Bancroft, in so materially abridging their usurped functions by
snatching the colt from their hands. At the time, they predicted that
this rash and most ill-judged interference of the Secretary would end
in the breaking up of all discipline in the Navy. But it has not so
proved. These officers _now_ predict that, if the "cat" be abolished,
the same unfulfilled prediction would be verified.

Concerning the license with which many captains violate the express
laws laid down by Congress for the government of the Navy, a glaring
instance may be quoted. For upward of forty years there has been on the
American Statute-book a law prohibiting a captain from inflicting, on
his own authority, more than twelve lashes at one time. If more are to
be given, the sentence must be passed by a Court-martial. Yet, for
nearly half a century, this law has been frequently, and with almost
perfect impunity, set at naught: though of late, through the exertions
of Bancroft and others, it has been much better observed than formerly;
indeed, at the present day, it is generally respected. Still, while the
Neversink was lying in a South American port, on the cruise now written
of, the seamen belonging to another American frigate informed us that
their captain sometimes inflicted, upon his own authority, eighteen and
twenty lashes. It is worth while to state that this frigate was vastly
admired by the shore ladies for her wonderfully neat appearance. One of
her forecastle-men told me that he had used up three jack-knives
(charged to him on the books of the purser) in scraping the
belaying-pins and the combings of the hatchways.

It is singular that while the Lieutenants of the watch in American
men-of-war so long usurped the power of inflicting corporal punishment
with the _colt_, few or no similar abuses were known in the English
Navy. And though the captain of an English armed ship is authorised to
inflict, at his own discretion, _more_ than a dozen lashes (I think
three dozen), yet it is to be doubted whether, upon the whole, there is
as much flogging at present in the English Navy as in the American. The
chivalric Virginian, John Randolph of Roanoke, declared, in his place
in Congress, that on board of the American man-of-war that carried him
out Amba