FLOGGING NOT NECESSARY.
But White-Jacket is ready to come down from the lofty mast-head of an
eternal principle, and fight you—Commodores and Captains of the navy—on
your own quarter-deck, with your own weapons, at your own paces.
Exempt yourselves from the lash, you take Bible oaths to it that it is
indispensable for others; you swear that, without the lash, no armed
ship can be kept in suitable discipline. Be it proved to you, officers,
and stamped upon your foreheads, that herein you are utterly wrong.
“Send them to Collingwood,” said Lord Nelson, “and _he_ will bring them
to order.” This was the language of that renowned Admiral, when his
officers reported to him certain seamen of the fleet as wholly
ungovernable. “Send them to Collingwood.” And who was Collingwood,
that, after these navy rebels had been imprisoned and scourged without
being brought to order, Collingwood could convert them to docility?
Who Admiral Collinngwood was, as an historical hero, history herself
will tell you; nor, in whatever triumphal hall they may be hanging,
will the captured flags of Trafalgar fail to rustle at the mention of
that name. But what Collingwood was as a disciplinarian on board the
ships he commanded perhaps needs to be said. He was an officer, then,
who held in abhorrence all corporal punishment; who, though seeing more
active service than any sea-officer of his time, yet, for years
together, governed his men without inflicting the lash.
But these seaman of his must have been most exemplary saints to have
proved docile under so lenient a sway. Were they saints? Answer, ye
jails and alms-houses throughout the length and breadth of Great
Britain, which, in Collingwood’s time, were swept clean of the last
lingering villain and pauper to man his majesty’s fleets.
Still more, _that_ was a period when the uttermost resources of England
were taxed to the quick; when the masts of her multiplied fleets almost
transplanted her forests, all standing to the sea; when British
press-gangs not only boarded foreign ships on the high seas, and
boarded foreign pier-heads, but boarded their own merchantmen at the
mouth of the Thames, and boarded the very fire-sides along its banks;
when Englishmen were knocked down and dragged into the navy, like
cattle into the slaughter-house, with every mortal provocation to a mad
desperation against the service that thus ran their unwilling heads
into the muzzles of the enemy’s cannon. _This_ was the time, and
_these_ the men that Collingwood 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
discipline of an entire squadron in time of war without having an
instrument of scourging on board, what inevitable inferences must be
drawn, and how disastrous to the mental character of all advocates of
navy flogging, who may happen to be navy officers themselves.
It cannot have escaped the discernment of any observer of mankind,
that, in the presence of its conventional inferiors, conscious
imbecility in power often seeks to carry off that imbecility by
assumptions of lordly severity. The amount of flogging on board an
American man-of-war is, in many cases, in exact proportion to the
professional and intellectual incapacity of her officers to command.
Thus, in these cases, the law that authorises flogging does but put a
scourge into the hand of a fool. In most calamitous instances this has
been shown.
It is a matter of record, that some English ships of war have fallen a
prey to the enemy through the insubordination of the crew, induced by
the witless cruelty of their officers; officers so armed by the law
that they could inflict that cruelty without restraint. Nor have there
been wanting instances where the seamen have ran away with their ships,
as in the case of the Hermione and Danae, and forever rid themselves of
the outrageous inflictions of their officers by sacrificing their lives
to their fury.
Events like these aroused the attention of the British public at the
time. But it was a tender theme, the public agitation of which the
government was anxious to suppress. Nevertheless, whenever the thing
was privately discussed, these terrific mutinies, together with the
then prevailing insubordination of the men in the navy, were almost
universally attributed to the exasperating system of flogging. And the
necessity for flogging was generally believed to be directly referable
to the impressment of such crowds of dissatisfied men. And in high
quarters it was held that if, by any mode, the English fleet could be
manned without resource to coercive measures, then the necessity of
flogging would cease.
“If we abolish either impressment or flogging, the abolition of the
other will follow as a matter of course.” This was the language of the
_Edinburgh Review_, at a still later period, 1824.
If, then, the necessity of flogging in the British armed marine was
solely attributed to the impressment of the seamen, what faintest
shadow of reason is there for the continuance of this barbarity in the
American service, which is wholly freed from the reproach of
impressment?
It is true that, during a long period of non-impressment, and even down
to the present day, flogging has been, and still is, the law of the
English navy. But in things of this kind England should be nothing to
us, except an example to be shunned. Nor should wise legislators wholly
govern themselves by precedents, and conclude that, since scourging has
so long prevailed, some virtue must reside in it. Not so. The world has
arrived at a period which renders it the part of Wisdom to pay homage
to the prospective precedents of the Future in preference to those of
the Past. The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is
endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The
Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all
things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; the Future is both hope and
fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future the Bible of
the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s
wife, crystallised in the act of looking backward, and forever
incapable of looking before.
Let us leave the Past, then, to dictate laws to immovable China; let us
abandon it to the Chinese Legitimists of Europe. But for us, we will
have another captain to rule over us—that captain who ever marches at
the head of his troop and beckons them forward, not lingering in the
rear, and impeding their march with lumbering baggage-wagons of old
precedents. _This_ is the Past.
But in many things we Americans are driven to a rejection of the maxims
of the Past, seeing that, ere long, the van of the nations must, of
right, belong to ourselves. There are occasions when it is for America
to make precedents, and not to obey them. We should, if possible, prove
a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone
generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world
is not yet middle-aged.
Escaped from the house of bondage, Israel of old did not follow after
the ways of the Egyptians. To her was given an express dispensation; to
her were given new things under the sun. And we Americans are the
peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the
liberties of the world. Seventy years ago we escaped from thrall; and,
besides our first birthright—embracing one continent of earth—God has
given to us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the
political pagans, that shall yet come and lie down under the shade of
our ark, without bloody hands being lifted. God has predestinated,
mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel
in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are
the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the
wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that
is ours. In our youth is our strength; in our inexperience, our wisdom.
At a period when other nations have but lisped, our deep voice is heard
afar. Long enough, have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and
doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has
come in us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings. And let
us always remember that with ourselves, almost for the first time in
the history of earth, national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy;
for we can not do a good to America but we give alms to the world.