- end_line
- 11654
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.843Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11591
- text
- _There_ is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life
and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
three-worded sentence!
You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:—all is a blank.
And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
of the Highlander’s calamity.
Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last
woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed
circumstances of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known,
operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid
detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most
palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
concerning emigrant ships in general.
Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such
multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let
us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they
have God’s right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her
miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole
world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall
of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the
emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and
will.
Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the
captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent
lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are
immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance
necessitates him to place the _galley,_ or steerage-passengers’ stove,
in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking
during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them
more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore and
aft?—There is no law concerning these things. And if there was, who but
some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is there a
Howard in office!
We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of
_them,_ go to heaven, before some of _us?_ We may have civilized bodies
and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world;
deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that
one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity
is striving to make us.
- title
- Chunk 7