ssador to Russia he had witnessed more flogging than had taken
place on his own plantation of five hundred African slaves in ten
years. Certain it is, from what I have personally seen, that the
English officers, as a general thing, seem to be less disliked by their
crews than the American officers by theirs. The reason probably is,
that many of them, from their station in life, have been more
accustomed to social command; hence, quarter-deck authority sits more
naturally on them. A coarse, vulgar man, who happens to rise to high
naval rank by the exhibition of talents not incompatible with
vulgarity, invariably proves a tyrant to his crew. It is a thing that
American men-of-war's-men have often observed, that the Lieutenants
from the Southern States, the descendants of the old Virginians, are
much less severe, and much more gentle and gentlemanly in command, than
the Northern officers, as a class.

According to the present laws and usages of the Navy, a seaman, for the
most trivial alleged offences, of which he may be entirely innocent,
must, without a trial, undergo a penalty the traces whereof he carries
to the grave; for to a man-of-war's-man's experienced eye the marks of
a naval scourging with the "_cat_" are through life discernible. And
with these marks on his back, this image of his Creator must rise at
the Last Day. Yet so untouchable is true dignity, that there are cases
wherein to be flogged at the gangway is no dishonour; though, to abase
and hurl down the last pride of some sailor who has piqued him, be
some-times the secret motive, with some malicious officer, in procuring
him to be condemned to the lash. But this feeling of the innate dignity
remaining untouched, though outwardly the body be scarred for the whole
term of the natural life, is one of the hushed things, buried among the
holiest privacies of the soul; a thing between a man's God and himself;
and for ever undiscernible by our fellow-men, who account _that_ a
degradation which seems so to the corporal eye. But what torments must
that seaman undergo who, while his back bleeds at the gangway, bleeds
agonized drops of shame from his soul! Are we not justified in
immeasurably denouncing this thing? Join hands with me, then; and, in
the name of that Being in whose image the flogged sailor is made, let
us demand of Legislators, by what right they dare profane what God
himself accounts sacred.

Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman? a