University of Virginia Library

13. CHAP. XIII.
Containing Reflections.

It is time now to make some reflections,
were it not only for the sake of form;
just as the clergyman who divides his text
into several heads, and then adds, “we
shall conclude with an improvement of the
whole; or with a few practical observations,
or reflections.” In early life, when
long sermons tired me, the young mind
not capable of a long attention, I used
to look out for this peroratory part of
the discourse, with much anxiety; not
that I valued it more than any other, for
the intrinsic worth of it; but merely because
it was the last. It appeared to me
an unconscionable thing in a man to speak
too long, when it was left to himself
how long he should speak. Ah! if it
was known how many curses I have given
tedious speakers even in the pulpit itself,
in my time, I should be thought a very
wick-

wicked man. Perhaps some may think
that I am a tedious writer. Well; but
have not readers it in their power to lay
down the book when they think proper,
and begin again?

But as I was saying, it has become time
to make some reflections, of which it must
be acknowledged, I have been sparing
in this the latter part of my performance.
But upon what shall I reflect? The
vanity of things, doubtless. But in what
mode shall I present this vanity? In moralizing
on the disappointment of the Captain
and the revenue officer, with the waiting
man Duncan Ferguson, coming forward
to establish offices, and all at once
made prisoners, and treated as the meanest
culprits? or shall it be on the mistaken
patriotism of even good, though uninformed
men, opposing an obnoxious, and unequal
law, not by remonstrance, but by actual
force, and thereby sapping all principle,
or rather overthrowing all structure of a
republican government. No: these are
exhausted topics. I shall rather content
myself at present, with a differtation, on
that mode of disgrace, or punishment,
which was chosen in the case of the revenue
officer; tarring and feathering.I

I find no trace of this mode of punishment
amongst the ancients, I mean the
Greeks, Hebrews, and Romans. Having
had occasion lately to look over the
whole book of Deuteronomy, I have paid
attention to this particular, and have discovered
no vestige of it. Amongst the
Greeks, so far as my memory serves me,
there is nothing like it. I recollect well
the sanctions of criminal law amongst the
Romans. And what appears to me to come
nearst to this of tarring and feathering, is
the punishment of the sewing up the culprit
in a sack, with an ape, a serpent, and
a fox; and throwing him into a river, or
a balon of the sea, to drown, if he had escaped
death by his companions in the
mean time.

As to the origin of tarring and feathering,
I am at a loss to say. It would seem
to me, that it took its rise in the town
of Bofton, just before the commencement
of the American revolution. Unless,
indeed, it should be contended that
Nebuchadnezzar was tarred and feathered;
of which I am not persuaded; because tho'
it is said that “his nails had grown to eagles
claws,” and in that case presenting
the talons of a bird, which a tarred and
fea-

feathered man resembles, yet at the sam
time it is added, he eat grass like an ox.
Now a turkey buzzard, or a bald eagle,
does not eat grass like an ox; nor do I
know that these sowls eat grass at all, at least
so obviously as to make the eating grass a
distinguishing characteristic of their nature.
I shall therefore give up the hypothesis of
Nebuchadnezzar being tarred and feathered.

It would appear to me to be what may
be called a revolutionary punishment, beyound
what in a settled state of the government
may be inflicted by the opprobrium of
opinion; and yet short of the coercion of
the laws. It was in this middle stare, that
it took it's rise with us; answering the
same end, but with a more mild operation,
than that of the lantern, at the commencement
of the revolution in France.
It took rise in the sea coast towns in America;
and I would suppose it to be owing
to some accidental conjunction of the seamen
and the citizens, devising a mode of
punishment for a person obnoxious. The
sailors naturally thought of tar, and the
women, who used to be assisting on these
occasions, thought of bolsters and pillowcases.
Let

Let it suffice that I have suggested the
question, and leave it to be settled by
some other person, at some future period.