If we turn again to European Nations, we shall meet with farther instances of the same kind of correction. It was certainly adopted in Denmark, and even in the Court of that Country, towards the latter end of the last Century, as we are informed by Lord Molesworth, in his _Account of Denmark_. It was the custom, his Lordship says, at the end of every hunting-match at Court, that, in order to conclude the entertainment with as much festivity as it had begun, a proclamation was made,--if any could inform against any person who had infringed the known laws of hunting, let him stand forth and accuse. As soon as the contravention was ascertained, the culprit was made to kneel down between the horns of the stag that had been hunted; two of the Gentlemen removed the skirts of his coat; when the King, taking a small long wand in his hand, laid a certain number of blows, which was proportioned to the greatness of the offence, on the culprit’s breech; whilst, in the mean time (the Noble Author adds) the Huntsmen with their brass horns, and the dogs with their loud openings, proclaimed the King’s Justice, and the Criminal’s punishment: the scene affording diversion to the Queen, and the whole Court, who stood in a circle about the place of execution[107]. Among the Dutch, verberations on the posteriors are equally in use; and a serious flagellation on that part, is the punishment which is established at the Cape of Good Hope, one of their Colonies, as Kolben informs us in his _Description_ of it, for those who are found smoaking tobacco in the streets: a practice which has frequently been there the cause of houses being set in fire. In Poland, a _lower_ discipline is the penance constantly inflicted upon fornicators, in Convents, previously to tying them together by the bond of matrimony; or sometimes afterwards. In England, castigations of the same kind, not to quote other instances, are adopted among that respectable part of the Nation, the Seamen, as we find in Falconer’s Marine Dictionary; and a _Cobbing-board_ is looked upon as a necessary part of the rigging of his Majesty’s ships. Among the Spaniards, they so generally consider the part of the human body of which we are treating here, as the properest to bear ill usage and mortification, that in every place there is commonly some good Friar who makes his posteriors answerable for the sins of the whole Parish; and who, according as he has been fee’d for that purpose, flogs himself, or at least tells his Customers he has done so: hence the common Spanish saying, which is mentioned in the History of Friar Gerundio de Campazas, _Yo soi el culo del Frayle_;--‘I am as badly off as the Friar’s backside;’ which is said by persons who think that they are made to pay, or suffer, for advantages they are not admitted to share.