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Untitled Article
and- —fall back!—still gasping , and unassured of my safety : so completely does the awakened and aroused horror grasp at my frame , and cling to my moral faculties . In the long and oftentimes dismal retrospection of the scenes to which I have been witness , the insolent mockeries of justice , the despotic and capricious infliction of scourges and suffering ( some of which caprices
would be ludicrous , if they did not indulge themselves in the agonies they occasioned ) which I know to be true , and which did habitually occur in other ships of war , though so very little evidence appeared of them under the authority of that generously brave and considerately humane man with whom it was ray better fortune to be cast , ( though even there—but his eye did not witness it—there was sufficient to cause a groaning , )—in this retrospection I at times have been astonished that instances of
sudden revenge , even to death , by the knife , handspike , or crowbar , or throat grappling , are of such rare occurrence . * An Englishman scorns to use a knife , he leaves that to more dastardly foreigners ; and he does not resort to the cat and monkey vrork of scratching and throttling . ' I have heard this a thousand times . But * will an Englishman submit to a blow ? ' Ay , will he ; I have seen him do so a thousand times . ' Take a blow
submissively ? Ay , though his fist were hard and heavy enough to fell an ox . I have seen athletic men beaten and bruised at their work , by persons whose life they could have squeezed out as easily as you would crush the pulp from an orange ; though the blows and bruises were accompanied by a shower of abusive
epithets and vituperative curses , they were ductile and submissive . This is the effect of discipline ; yet were these same men as reckless of danger , as bold and unfearing in battle as the free lion of the desert : and they looked on peril with as steady on eye as the eagle on the mountain cliff gazes on the sun . But education had obliterated their true manliness ; it had bowed
their souls to abject servility ; it had bowed down their more beautiful and lofty nature to the degradation of mere hounds of the game . Ay , ay , these bold and boasted British bull-dogs were so bowed down . Staunch , staunch , indeed , when 'the slips were taken off , and they started for the prey . ' They had heard , as we all have heard , they had been told , as we all have been told , ( and , luckily , the trutn is-beginning to be taught as well as told , and felt as well as taught—felt , too , where it causes not a
little wincing , ) ay , as often as he had seen days in the year , the English sailor had been told that he was a true born Briton 'that each , and every man , of whatever birth or purse , or no purse at all , had equal laws to guide , and equal justice to protect him ; he was told that , peer or peasant , his rights were the same : he was told that glorious independence and freedom from scathe of tyranny were his inalienable heritage ; he was told , — he was told that an unflinching spirit in resisting oppression , and driving back
Untitled Article
Autobiography of Pel . Verjuice . 825
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 825, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/21/
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