“Now,” said he, addressing the three prisoners, “you have been found guilty of an offence against the good order and discipline of this ship, which cannot be permitted, and which must positively be put a stop to.  Heretofore it has not occurred, and I trust this will be the last case.  Do you admit that you deserve punishment?”

No answer.

“Have you anything to advance why you should not be punished?”

The fellows nodged one another, scraped the deck with their feet, fumbled with their hats and waist-bands, and muttered something about “a letter they had written to the officer what reported them.”

“Letter!” exclaimed the captain; “let me see it.”

The epistle being handed to the captain, he read it aloud to the assembled ship’s company, who listened with all their ears.  At the conclusion, he folded it up, and, turning to the officer, asked,—­

“What have you to say to this?”

“Nothing, sir—­nothing,” was the obdurate reply.

“Well now, my lads,” observed the captain to the crew, after a pause of several minutes, “I shall give you a chance.  These fellows appear, by their own confession, to have done what they knew to be wrong; and accordingly, as you perceive, they have brought themselves close aboard of the gangway.  It would serve them all perfectly right to give each of them a good sound punishment.  But I am willing to hope, that if I forgive them on your account—­that is to say, if I let them off in consideration of the good conduct of the ship’s company, and in confidence of your all behaving well in future—­they will be quite as much disposed to exert themselves to recover their characters, as if they had tasted the bitterness of the gangway:  at all events, I’ll try them and you for once.  Pipe down!”

It is only necessary to state further, that for nearly a year afterwards there occurred no instance of drunkenness or neglect at the watering parties.

There is one other point of importance in this discussion, and as it seems to possess a considerable analogy in its bearing to the suggestions already thrown out, it may possibly have greater weight in conjunction with them than if it were brought forward alone.  In every system of penal jurisprudence it seems to be of the first importance to let it be felt that the true degradation lies more in the crime itself, than in the expiatory punishment by which it is followed.  Whenever this principle is not duly understood, punishments lose half their value, while they are often virtually augmented in severity.  The object of all punishments is evidently to prevent the recurrence of offences, either by others or by the offender himself.  But it is not, by any means, intended that he should not have a full and fair chance allowed him for a return to virtue.  The very instant punishment is over, he should be allowed to start afresh for his character.  If a man is never to have his offence or his chastisement forgotten, he can hardly be expected to set seriously about the re-establishment of his damaged reputation.