Yet, for nearly half a century, this law has been frequently, and with almost perfect impunity, set at naught: though of late, through the exertions of Bancroft and others, it has been much better observed than formerly; indeed, at the present day, it is generally respected.

Still, while the Neversink was lying in a South American port, on the cruise now written of, the seamen belonging to another American frigate informed us that their captain sometimes inflicted, upon his own authority, eighteen and twenty lashes.

It is worth while to state that this frigate was vastly admired by the shore ladies for her wonderfully neat appearance.

One of her forecastle-men told me that he had used up three jack-knives (charged to him on the books of the purser) in scraping the belaying-pins and the combings of the hatchways.
It is singular that while the Lieutenants of the watch in American men-of-war so long usurped the power of inflicting corporal punishment with the _colt_, few or no similar abuses were known in the English Navy.

And though the captain of an English armed ship is authorised to inflict, at his own discretion, _more_ than a dozen lashes (I think three dozen), yet it is to be doubted whether, upon the whole, there is as much flogging at present in the English Navy as in the American.