gazing up with inflamed eye at some venerable six-footer of a
forecastle man, cursing and insulting him by every epithet deemed
most scandalous and unendurable among men. Yet that man's
indignant tongue is treble-knotted by the law, that suspends
death itself over his head should his passion discharge the
slightest blow at the boy-worm that spits at his feet.

But since what human nature is, and what it must for ever continue to
be, is well enough understood for most practical purposes, it needs no
special example to prove that, where the merest boys, indiscriminately
snatched from the human family, are given such authority over mature
men, the results must be proportionable in monstrousness to the custom
that authorises this worse than cruel absurdity.

Nor is it unworthy of remark that, while the noblest-minded and
most heroic sea-officers--men of the topmost stature, including
Lord Nelson himself--have regarded flogging in the Navy with the
deepest concern, and not without weighty scruples touching its
general necessity, still, one who has seen much of midshipmen can
truly say that he has seen but few midshipmen who were not
enthusiastic advocates and admirers of scourging. It would almost
seem that they themselves, having so recently escaped the
posterior discipline of the nursery and the infant school, are
impatient to recover from those smarting reminiscences by mincing
the backs of full-grown American freemen.

It should not to be omitted here, that the midshipmen in the
English Navy are not permitted to be quite so imperious as in the
American ships. They are divided into three (I think) probationary
classes of "volunteers," instead of being at once advanced to a