CHAPTER XXXIV.
SOME OF THE EVIL EFFECTS OF FLOGGING.
There are incidental considerations touching this matter of flogging, which exaggerate the evil into a great enormity.

Many illustrations might be given, but let us be content with a few.
One of the arguments advanced by officers of the Navy in favour of corporal punishment is this: it can be inflicted in a moment; it consumes no valuable time; and when the prisoner's shirt is put on, _that_ is the last of it.

Whereas, if another punishment were substituted, it would probably occasion a great waste of time and trouble, besides thereby begetting in the sailor an undue idea of his importance.
Absurd, or worse than absurd, as it may appear, all this is true; and if you start from the same premises with these officers, you, must admit that they advance an irresistible argument.

But in accordance with this principle, captains in the Navy, to a certain extent, inflict the scourge--which is ever at hand--for nearly all degrees of transgression.

In offences not cognisable by a court-martial, little, if any, discrimination is shown.