re are many who cry out against this as
dangerous and injurious to the service; as if education spoiled an
officer, and the scion of an illustrious house would not be more careful
to uphold an escutcheon without blemish for centuries, than one who has
little more than brute courage; but those who argue thus are the very
people who are injurious to the service, for they can have no other
reason, except that they wish that the juniors may be tyrannised over
with impunity.

But it remembered that these are not the observations of a junior
officer smarting under insult--they are the result of deep and calm
reflection. We have arrived to that grade, that, although we have the
power to inflict, we are too high to receive insult, but we have not
forgotten how our young blood has boiled when wanton, reckless, and
cruel torture has been heaped upon our feelings, merely because, as a
junior officer, we were not in a position to retaliate, or even to
reply. And another evil is, that this _great error_ is _disseminated_.
In observing on it, in one of our works, called _Peter Simple_, we have
put the following true observation in the mouth of O'Brien. Peter
observes, in his simple, right-minded way:

"I should think, O'Brien, that the very circumstance of having had your
feelings so often wounded by such language when you were a junior
officer would make you doubly careful not to use it towards others, when
you had advanced in the service?"

"Peter, that's just the first feeling, which wears away after a time,
till at last, your own sense of indignation becomes blunted, and becomes
indifferent to it; you forget, also, that you wound the feelings of
others, and carry the habit with, you, to the great injury and disgrace
of the service."

Let it not be supposed that in making these remarks we want to cause
litigation, or insubordination. On the contrary, we assert that this
error is the cause, and eventually will be much more the cause, of
insubordination; for as the junior officers who enter the service are
improved, so will they resist it. The complaint here is more against
the officers, than the captains, whose power has been perhaps already
too much curtailed by late regulations: that power must remain, for
although there may be some few who are so perverted as to make those
whom they command uncomfortable, in justice to the service we are proud
to assert that the majority acknowledge, by their conduct, that the
greatest