FLOGGING, ARMY AND NAVY. Corporal punishment has existed from time immemorial in the British army and navy; formerly having been inflicted upon slight occasion, and often with barbarous severity. In deference, however, to public opinion, it has been much less resorted to during recent years, and promises almost to disappear under a regulation of 1866. A man must now be convicted of one disgraceful offense against discipline before lie can be liable to flogging for the next such offense; and even after one such degradation, he may be restored to the non-liable class by a year's good conduct. The punishment of flogging, which is generally administered with a whip or "cat" of nine tails on the bare back, cannot, under existing rules, exceed fifty lashes.
Corporal punishment is not recognized in the French army; but then the soldiers in that country are drawn by conscription from all ranks of society, and have, on an aver age, a higher moral tone than the British recruits, who, attracted by a bounty, volunteer usually from the lowest orders. On the other hand, the discipline in the French army,
and especially during war on a foreign soil, is universally admitted to be inferior to the strict rule preserved among British troops. Soldiers and sailors being men unaccus tomed to control their passions, and any breach of insubordination being fatal to the esprit of a force, unless summarily repressed, it is considered necessary to retain the power—however rarely exercised—of inflicting the painful and humiliating punishment of flogging. The French soldier, though escaping the ignominy of personal chastise ment, is governed by a code harsher than our articles of war as actually administered; and the punishment of death, scarcely known in the British service during peace, is not infrequently visited in France upon offenders against discipline.