ngwood governed without the lash.

I know it has been said that Lord Collingwood began by inflicting
severe punishments, and afterward ruling his sailors by the mere 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
d