It cannot fail to humble a regiment to have one of their number flogged, and it ruins the individual. No man who has prided himself on his character, can look up after it: he bears a humiliating sense of disgrace about him for ever after,—‘a worm that will not sleep, and never dies.’ My character, he will say, is gone, I can never hold up my head among my comrades; all prospect of promotion is lost to me, for should my officers at any future period offer it, how could I, who have been tied up, and my back lacerated before the gaze of the whole regiment, ever feel confidence to command those who have witnessed my disgrace, and to whom I have been an object of pity or scorn, either of which is alike humiliating to a mind not entirely callous. Many may wonder at my warmth on this subject; but if they had, like me, seen the dreadful extremity to which it was at one time carried, they would cease to be surprised. Who that has ever seen a man stripped before the gaze of a regiment, his limbs bound to the halberts, and the knotted scourge lacerating his flesh, while the surgeon stood by to measure by the pulse the amount of human agony which the poor wretch could suffer, would ever wish to see it again? The first man I saw flogged, received eight hundred lashes, for desertion—it would have been more merciful to have shot him. But men have been known to receive a thousand lashes before they were taken down from the halberts; and on occasions where nature could not bear the punishment awarded at once, they have been brought out again, and again, to have their half-healed backs torn open afresh! They have been known to faint under their punishment, and again be flogged into life! On other occasions their agony was lengthened out by giving the lash by tap of drum, allowing half a minute to elapse between each tap, and when the mangled back was cut through the skin, and the bare muscle quivered under the scourge, the only mercy extended was to inflict the rest of the punishment on some other part of the body! And yet all this was done under the eyes of people professing Christianity and civilization—who were yearly inundating Parliament with petitions against flogging negroes with a cart-whip—yes, while the blood of their countrymen was sprinkling a barrack square, and their cries were ringing in their ears! They saw it not—heard it not—their feelings were too fine for aught but distant misery. The groans of their tortured countrymen were given to the wind—no voice was heard in their behalf—no arm was raised to save. Yes, there were a few who vindicated the cause of insulted humanity, and they live in the grateful remembrance of the soldier; but their efforts were rendered ineffectual through the opposition of men whom I dare not trust myself to speak about. How individuals can be found to stand up in the senate of a free and enlightened country, and vindicate this brutal and inhuman mode of punishment, is an anomaly not easy to be accounted for.