36. CHAPTER XXXVI.
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 Collingwood 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 seamen 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 behavior 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 jeopardized 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 can not go further back than to Blake,
so we can not 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 can not 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 authorizes 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 of 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, crystallized 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 birth-right—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.
