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.
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