{"id":"01KG8AMFEWJRX4Y93EKX2895FA","cid":"bafkreidxsznv7lbqjxhnpneb7hlcf2iqdzk5gdy6dbtxckr44pdbaowtvq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8441,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","start_line":8373,"text":"that, in this particular thing, the midshipman had done otherwise than\r\nperfectly right.\r\n\r\nUpon a midshipman’s complaining of a seaman to Lord Collingwood, when\r\nCaptain of a line-of-battle ship, he ordered the man for punishment;\r\nand, in the interval, calling the midshipman aside, said to him, “In\r\nall probability, now, the fault is yours—you know; therefore, when the\r\nman is brought to the mast, you had better ask for his pardon.”\r\n\r\nAccordingly, upon the lad’s public intercession, Collingwood, turning\r\nto the culprit, said, “This young gentleman has pleaded so humanely for\r\nyou, that, in hope you feel a due gratitude to him for his benevolence,\r\nI will, for this time, overlook your offence.” This story is related by\r\nthe editor of the Admiral’s “Correspondence,” to show the Admiral’s\r\nkindheartedness.\r\n\r\nNow Collingood was, in reality, one of the most just, humane, and\r\nbenevolent admirals that ever hoisted a flag. For a sea-officer,\r\nCollingwood was a man in a million. But if a man like him, swayed by\r\nold usages, could thus violate the commonest principle of justice—with\r\nhowever good motives at bottom—what must be expected from other\r\nCaptains not so eminently gifted with noble traits as Collingwood?\r\n\r\nAnd if the corps of American midshipmen is mostly replenished from the\r\nnursery, the counter, and the lap of unrestrained indulgence at home:\r\nand if most of them at least, by their impotency as officers, in all\r\nimportant functions at sea, by their boyish and overweening conceit of\r\ntheir gold lace, by their overbearing manner toward the seamen, and by\r\ntheir peculiar aptitude to construe the merest trivialities of manner\r\ninto set affronts against their dignity; if by all this they sometimes\r\ncontract the ill-will of the seamen; and if, in a thousand ways, the\r\nseamen cannot but betray it—how easy for any of these midshipmen, who\r\nmay happen to be unrestrained by moral principle, to resort to spiteful\r\npractices in procuring vengeance upon the offenders, in many instances\r\nto the extremity of the lash; since, as we have seen, the tacit\r\nprinciple in the Navy seems to be that, in his ordinary intercourse\r\nwith the sailors, a midshipman can do nothing obnoxious to the public\r\ncensure of his superiors.\r\n\r\n“You fellow, I’ll get you _licked_ before long,” is often heard from a\r\nmidshipman to a sailor who, in some way not open to the judicial action\r\nof the Captain, has chanced to offend him.\r\n\r\nAt times you will see one of these lads, not five feet high, gazing up\r\nwith inflamed eye at some venerable six-footer of a forecastle man,\r\ncursing and insulting him by every epithet deemed most scandalous and\r\nunendurable among men. Yet that man’s indignant tongue is\r\ntreble-knotted by the law, that suspends death itself over his head\r\nshould his passion discharge the slightest blow at the boy-worm that\r\nspits at his feet.\r\n\r\nBut since what human nature is, and what it must for ever continue to\r\nbe, is well enough understood for most practical purposes, it needs no\r\nspecial example to prove that, where the merest boys, indiscriminately\r\nsnatched from the human family, are given such authority over mature\r\nmen, the results must be proportionable in monstrousness to the custom\r\nthat authorises this worse than cruel absurdity.\r\n\r\nNor is it unworthy of remark that, while the noblest-minded and most\r\nheroic sea-officers—men of the topmost stature, including Lord Nelson\r\nhimself—have regarded flogging in the Navy with the deepest concern,\r\nand not without weighty scruples touching its general necessity, still,\r\none who has seen much of midshipmen can truly say that he has seen but\r\nfew midshipmen who were not enthusiastic advocates and admirers of\r\nscourging. It would almost seem that they themselves, having so\r\nrecently escaped the posterior discipline of the nursery and the infant\r\nschool, are impatient to recover from those smarting reminiscences by\r\nmincing the backs of full-grown American freemen.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJSTQ2QAVRMYHGQ0ES9NA","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMFEW7S9KP9XVMBMQ4DKD","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AMFEWFBW6JN6XWC2G32KF","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:38.364Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:49.714Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}