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?
There is, however, one point connected with the administration of
justice to seamen, to which I wish seriously to call the attention
of those interested in their behalf, and, if possible, also of
some of those concerned in that administration.
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