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.
Pages:
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666