The North Carolina Standard

Military Floggings in England.—We have somewhere read that a private soldier in a regiment of militia once recovered heavy damages against his officers, because one or more lashes had been inflicted upon him than had been awarded by the brutal sentence of a brutal court martial. That sentence, if we remember right, was a thousand lashes—i. e. nine thousand stripes; or, reckoning that each of the nine tails or thongs of the instruments of torture contains three knots, and that the executioners were then, and are now, taught on scientific principles, to make every thong tell—the infernal sentence would literally mean twenty-seven thousand wounds. The victim in the case referred to received this horrid punishment at three instalments;—that is to say, when the flesh was so dreadfully torn that the presiding surgeon declared his life in danger from the loss of blood, or from the exhaustion of unbearable anguish, the mangled wretch was unbound from the triangular rack, and conveyed to the hospital, whence, when his wounds were healed, he was brought out to have them torn open again by the knotted cords, and this fiendlike process was repeated till the number of lashes first awarded by the miscreants in epaulettes had been inflicted upon him: Thousands of miserable wretches in the "good old times" underwent this infernal process; and if in the case referred to—of which we have but an indistinct recollection—a soldier did recover heavy damages, we can but applaud the decision of the jury. In our opinion, utter ruin ought to overwhelm any beasts in human shape calling themselves men—not to say officers and gentlemen—who would consign a man to such inexpressibly atrocious punishment. Of late years some amelioration has been made to the extent to which the aristocratic amateurs of whipcord can indulge their unnatural penchant for tearing the living flesh from men's backs.

No man can be mangled twice on the same sentence; but if the surgeon decides that human nature can bear no more, ere the number of lashes awarded against the victim have been administered, the victim is pardoned the remainder. Courts martial, too, are restricted in their sentences to 200 or 300 lashes, and although officers may manage to torture a man to death with 150 lashes, the general effect of the restriction must be advantageous to the cause of humanity.

London Despatch.