It Is The Invariable Appeal, The Last Resort, Of Counsel,
When Everything Else Has Failed.
I have known cases of the most
flagrant nature, where after every effort has been made for the
captain,
And yet a verdict rendered against him, and all other
hope failed, this appeal has been urged, and with such success
that the punishment has been reduced to something little more
than nominal, the court not seeming to consider that it might be
made in almost every such case that could come before them. It is
a little singular, too, that it seems to be confined to cases
of shipmasters and officers. No one ever heard of a sentence,
for an offence committed on shore, being reduced by the court
on the ground of the prisoner's poverty, and the relation in
which he may stand to third persons. On the contrary, it had
been thought that the certainty that disgrace and suffering will
be brought upon others as well as himself, is one of the chief
restraints upon the criminally disposed. Besides, this course
works a peculiar hardship in the case of the sailor. For if
poverty is the point in question, the sailor is the poorer of the
two; and if there is a man on earth who depends upon whole limbs
and an unbroken spirit for support, it is the sailor. He, too,
has friends to whom his hard earnings may be a relief, and whose
hearts will bleed at any cruelty or indignity practised upon him.
Yet I never knew this side of the case to be once adverted to in
these arguments addressed to the leniency of the court, which are
now so much in vogue; and certainly they are never allowed a moment's
consideration when a sailor is on trial for revolt, or for an injury
done to an officer. Notwithstanding the many difficulties which
lie in a seaman's way in a court of justice, presuming that they
will be modified in time, there would be little to complain of,
were it not for these two appeals.
It is no cause of complaint that the testimony of seamen against
their officers is viewed with suspicion, and that great allowance is
made for combinations and exaggeration. On the contrary, it is the
judge's duty to charge the jury on these points strongly. But there
is reason for objection, when, after a strict cross-examination of
witnesses, after the arguments of counsel, and the judge's charge,
a verdict is found against the master, that the court should allow
the practice of hearing appeals to its lenity, supported solely by
evidence of the captain's good conduct when on shore, (especially
where the case is one in which no evidence but that of sailors could
have been brought against the accused), and then, on this ground,
and on the invariable claims of the wife and family, be induced
to cut down essentially the penalty imposed by a statute made
expressly for masters and officers of merchantmen, and for no
one else.
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