As Things Now Are, Many Masters Are Obliged To Sail Without Knowing
Anything Of Their Crews, Until They Get Out At Sea.
There may be
pirates or mutineers among them; and one bad man will often infect
all the rest; and
It is almost certain that some of them will be
ignorant foreigners, hardly understanding a word of our language,
accustomed all their lives to no influence but force, and perhaps
nearly as familiar with the use of the knife as with that of the
marline-spike. No prudent master, however peaceably inclined,
would go to sea without his pistols and handcuffs. Even with
such a crew as I have supposed, kindness and moderation would be
the best policy, and the duty of every conscientious man; and the
administering of corporal punishment might be dangerous, and of
doubtful use. But the question is not, what a captain ought
generally to do, but whether it shall be put out of the power of
every captain, under any circumstances, to make use of, even
moderate, chastisement. As the law now stands, a parent may
correct moderately his child, and the master his apprentice;
and the case of the shipmaster has been placed upon the same
principle. The statutes, and the common law as expounded in the
decisions of courts, and in the books of commentators, are express
and unanimous to this point, that the captain may inflict moderate
corporal chastisement, for a reasonable cause. If the punishment
is excessive, or the cause not sufficient to justify it, he is
answerable; and the jury are to determine, by their verdict in
each case, whether, under all the circumstances, the punishment
was moderate, and for a justifiable cause.
This seems to me to be as good a position as the whole subject
can be left in. I mean to say, that no positive enactment, going
beyond this, is needed, or would be a benefit either to masters
or men, in the present state of things. This again would seem to
be a case which should be left to the gradual working of its own
cure. As seamen improve, punishment will become less necessary;
and as the character of officers is raised, they will be less
ready to inflict it; and, still more, the infliction of it upon
intelligent and respectable men, will be an enormity which will
not be tolerated by public opinion, and by juries, who are the
pulse of the body politic. No one can have a greater abhorrence
of the infliction of such punishment than I have, and a stronger
conviction that severity is bad policy with a crew; yet I would
ask every reasonable man whether he had not better trust to the
practice becoming unnecessary and disreputable; to the measure
of moderate chastisement and a justifiable cause being better
understood, and thus, the act becoming dangerous, and in course
of time to be regarded as an unheard-of barbarity - than to take
the responsibility of prohibiting it, at once, in all cases,
and in what ever degree, by positive enactment?
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