The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-10-24 00:00:00

THE OLD PHLOGISTIO SYSTEM AS A
SUBSTITUTE TO THE BALL-HOT!

To the Editors.

" Eureka ! Eureka! cried Brown the otherj
morning when donning a new shirt, I have found
it out !" I really thought he was finding fault
with it ; so I asked him if the buttons were not I
right. But he replied that this exclamation had
nothing to do with the new shirt, and that it
only meant he had found something wonderful.
Indeed, said he, what an exoellent thing. The
Americans had invented a flogging-machine, to
save time, trouble, and tin, with a sliding scale
and a few pedals that can increase or decrease
any amount of punishment, according to the
age, airs or strength of the culprits, just like a
self-acting piano-forte.

Now, the Americans having no longer any use
therefore, offer this flogging-machine to England
for a mere nothing. It will supersede both the
British cat and cane, and save time, tin, and
trouble; for the cats often get out of working
order, and the canes are often alit or stolen by
mischievous boys, and then the worried mastera
are compelled to take their walking sticks, which
is decidedly against the Elizabethan rule, a cane
not bigger than the small finger. Well, besides
saving all that, the flogging-machine will spare
the feelings of all parties concerned in the canine
system ; should, by a mistake in the cranks or
oogwheels, the punishment be too severe, then a
deodand will be levied against the machine, and
there will be no after thought or revengeful
feeling against the intelligent and refined school-
master or offioer, for this machine will exhibit
no anger, no spite, no preference, it will act as
cool as cucumber, as indifferent as fate, making
no exception ;or persons of good size or station.
Again, it might be applied at dusk so as to make
the exhibition less disgraceful to all parties con-
cerned.

Brown adds that this flogging-machine would
be an excellent salve for bribery, if bribery was
not part and parcel of our elections, rising to
calling lawful expenses, two or three thousand
pounds for every candidate in a borough. He
says the ballot will be the only cure and pre-
vention of bribery. Meanwhile, the flogging-
machine could dispose of garrotters, ehlorr-
formists, burglars, and other offenders civilization
111 heir to, keeping in prison only murderers and
traitors, thereby saving several millions of money
to the public purse, preventing the contamina-
tion of the minor culprits, and putting an end
to that vicious circle of. ticket-of-leave men.
besides doing homage to the liberty of the subject.
As several people think it is much better to
beat a boy and send him free to play in the open
air, so the flogging-machine might treat all delk-
quents, except murderers, in the same manner
, as boys, with great advantage to the convicts
and the tax-payers. Of course the machine
would have a sliding-scale regulated thus: One
cut for stealing an apple, two cuts for a chicken,
three cuts for a goose, four or five for a turkey,
ten for a sheep, 26 for a horse, 30 for an ox, and
so on. The advocates for caning say that a
caned boy returns to his studies with more zest. I
So would the flogged thievespecome better
citizens, without being contaminated in those hot
beds of vice and villany called prisons; kept up
at so great a cost. Still there ought to be a
proviso for the delicate or thin-skinned offenders,
who might prefer living on the prison fare rather
than be tanned or flayed alive. But this would
be a matter of taste.

No doubt the above are immense advantages,
to be obtained without expense and pain, but
a few cuts and ruts on the skin of the
offenders; and no wonder that Brown should
run like mad about the room, and thinking of
the cat of nine tails, should exclaim Eureka, or,
which seems more appropriate, you raker! But
women are of the feline—not canine—tribe, so
I don't certainly agree with Brown about the
flogging-machine,

In my humble opinion electors require no
other treatment than an indemnity for loss of
time and livelihood like juries and witnesses.
Any other expense is bribery, and would be
liable to the action of the flogging-machine.
But the Ballot would settle all ; for the ball-lot
k the only purifier of our Constitution, and the
only promoter of the greatest possible happiness,
of the largest possible number of free citizens;
so 1 ask for nothing impossible. Without it
wealth will concentrate more and more within a
few families through primogeniture, promotion,
and patronage, and the poor proletarians must
emigrate or breed contagion, typhus, and cholera
as a retribution for our selfish government, since
most of our towns are suffered to rot under our
would-be self-government.
MARY BROWN.