Navy. Such captives as
these, when put on board a vessel of war and compelled to serve as
seamen there, had the influence which might have been expected from
them over the habits of the whole crew. {266} The severest and even
the most savage methods of discipline were often found necessary to
force such men into habits of obedience and into anything like decent
conduct. Flogging then, and for long after, prevailed in the Navy and
in the Army, and one of the most familiar arguments in favor of keeping
up that form of discipline was found in the fact that in many cases the
new recruits might have corrupted the habits of a whole ship's company
if they had not been compelled by frequent floggings to obey orders,
submit themselves to rules, and conduct themselves with decency.

For a long time a strong feeling had been growing up among
philanthropists and reformers of all kinds against the practice of
impressment and against the discipline of the "cat," as the flogging
instrument was commonly termed. The philanthropists and the reformers
generally were met by the old sort of familiar argument. They were
told that it would be utterly impossible to man a navy if the
press-gang were to be abolished, and equally impossible to keep the
Navy up to its work and in decent condition if seamen were no longer
liable to the punishment of the lash. The innovators were asked
whether they knew better how to raise and maintain an efficient Navy
than did the naval authorities, on whose shoulders rested the
responsibility of defending the shores of England from foreign
invasion. Those who made themselves conspicuous by their advocacy of
what were then beginning to be called humanitarian principles were
roundly accused of want of patriotism, and it was often suggested that
they were anti-English in their sentiments and their instincts, and
were persons who would probably, on the whole, rather welcome the
foreign invader than lend a hand to drive him back. The spirit of
humanity and of reform was in the air, however, and in the reformed
Parliament there were many men who had as good a gift of eloquence as
the best of their opponents, and who could not be frightened out of any
purpose on which they had set their minds and hearts. In 1835 the
Government of Lord Melbourne brought in a measure for the abolition of
the press-gang {267} system and for limitation of compulsory service in
the Navy to a period of five years. This measure not o