A few minutes ago, at about two o’clock, we witnessed another exhibition of what is called “discipline” on American ships, but what is elsewhere known as brutality. These are the facts: After dinner a man was sent down into the lazarette to bring up a barrel of split pease; it was the luckless Swede, Brün. This man, who is not particularly strong at best, and is now in very bad shape, found great difficulty in shoving the barrel, which seemed to weigh about one hundred and fifty pounds, up the lazarette hatch-way; and care must then be exercised never to allow the chimes of a barrel to touch the deck, as it would leave a scar. Brün finally got the barrel clear of the hatch and was rolling it flat along the poop, when the mate, looking as sour as lime-juice, came hobbling along the alley-way and, pointing to some old marks in the deck, said, “What d’you do that for?” Now, I am perfectly sure that Brün had not made those marks, and so was the mate; but Goggins was in one of his snarling moods, and without further ado he applied his boot to Brün’s person with such severity that he fell sprawling over the barrel, which then rolled over to leeward and struck the rail with a loud crack. Without a word, or even a look, the man gathered himself up, and, grasping the barrel, continued on his way, only remarking, “I’m doing the best I can, sair,” in the weak, precise tones of a foreigner speaking English. “What! answerin’ back?” yelled Goggins. “Who learned yer that, eh?” and running up to Brün, he seized him fiercely by the throat with his left hand and then drove his right fist with full force into the man’s face. The latter staggered and fell backward half over the rail into the lanyards of the mizzen-shrouds, where he remained some moments before he came to; and then, well knowing that he would have been pounded almost to death with any handy weapon if he so much as opened his mouth again, he once more started forward with the barrel. This is a nice state of affairs when men in the merchant service of the United States are suffered to be beaten and kicked into insensibility, and in some cases actually killed at the hands of brutal, savage mates. Before we sailed in this ship I had often heard that sailors under the stars and stripes underwent the most cruel punishments, in many cases of so unusual and low a description as to preclude mention in these pages, but I hardly believed it. Now, however, after knowing how Yankee ships are run and that such brutes as Goggins sail as mates in them, it is my opinion, and that of my wife also, who understands sailors, that the published accounts of seamen’s cruelties and sufferings at the hands of the officers of our sailing ships are, in nearly every instance, true and straightforward descriptions of what took place at sea. And what is the usual result? The justice dismisses the case with the remark, “Justifiable discipline.” This is the way that the marine law is generally administered in our lower courts.