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I am writing , such wanton devilishness among the boatswain ' s * mates of a guard-ship , that it is impossible to exaggerate in description , nor woulJ it be believed by my readers , if it were described . These ruffianly monsters in authority luxuriated in their occupation . It was delicious to them to see backs and shoulders instinctively shrinking as they passed a group of menhowever these men were occupied , or wherever they were employed , standing , walking , or reposing , the shoulder seemed suddenly endowed with the faculty of sight , whenever a
boatswain s-mate was in the vicinity , and it shrank as a snail ' s-horns shrink if a finger approach them . And how the fellows grinned in the satisfaction of * hearing the heavy thwacks resound from clavicles , or the knots on the rope sink with a dense thug into the flesh ! A privileged order were they ; beings certainly exhibiting human form ; but if anything more ferocious can be found
among wild beasts , I have yet to learn it , and when I have learnt it , I will abandon my opinions , and worship the boatswain ' s-mates of an English guard-ship . And it is for endeavouring to prevent a recurrence of these things , for aiming at suppressing such barbarities , for reining in the evil spirit of those whose authority sanctions , or at least permits , nay , it is too true , did commonly
encourage these and a thousand other ferocities and tyrannies , that we are to be reviled and vituperated as subverters of the
constitution , and unprincipled and mischievously blind levellers Why , on the will of these boatswain ' s-mates there was no check ; complaint would have been unredressed , or silenced by a fresh ' starting ; ' * or , perhaps , punished as mutinous . It was necessary to strike awe—to ' take the devil out of the rascals' carcases V
for in such a heterogeneous mixture there—desperadoes and vagabonds , is the set character assigned to it . Compounded of the sweepings of jails , the picked-up in drunken taverns , or the stolen from home and family , or the returning from foreign lands and kidnapped in free England ; iirst herded in , and then disgorged from those beastly dens which are curiously nicknamed Tenders , it was perhaps considered that the more brutal was the underling in authority , the more effectually and easily would discipline be kept ; that nothing but an iron hand and iron heart
were capable of teaching such discipline ; that iron hands , and iron heads , and iron hearts , were indispensable in mingling and directing the elements of Rule Britannia-ism , and fitting sucn true-born Britons for their glorious destiny . If this consideration be admitted as an excuse , or in palliation of the wanton ferocity
of those boatswain ' s-mates on board his Majesty ' s ship Salvador del Mundo , let the excusers and palliators make their best of it . 1 can truly say , there most ample and liberal use was made of it . lYaith the boatswain ' s-mates did not forego these luxurious privileges : no—they took free scope in their enjoyments . I am * Thrashing a man ' s shoultlers with a roi » e .
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Autobiography of Pel . Verjuice . 821
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No . 81 . 3 N
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 821, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/17/
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