Mr. Peter Taylor moved on Tuesday a resolution against flog-
ging in the Navy, and defended his position that flogging was quite unnecessary, and might be made an instrument of oppres- sion by a tyrannical officer, in a very able speech. He quoted Sir Charles Napier's saying, "You may put stripes on the corporal's arm and take them off again, but the stripes you put on the sailor's back with the ' cat ' you can never take off." He maintained that flogging in the Navy is as obsolete as flogging in the Army, that it degrades the sailor, and is quite unnecessary as a punishment. Mr. A. Egerton, however, asserted that both in the Crimea and in the Abyssinian campaign, soldiers had been summarily flogged without a court-martial, and that this punishment was still occasionally necessary, to maintain discip- line in both Services. The lash, said Mr. Egerton, was the sub- stitute in the British Navy for what in foreign navies would be the penalty of death, and was much to be preferred to it. That, however, we rather doubt. Liability to the punishment of death—at least by shooting—does not degrade men in their own eyes, and of course it would be very much more sparingly in- flicted than what is thought the lighter, and what is certainly the more degrading punishment. The motion was lost by 42 votes, —164 against 122.
Previous page
