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- in their generation than our lawgivers in ours. Compare the sea-laws of
our Navy with the Roman and Rhodian ocean ordinances; compare them with
the “Consulate of the Sea;” compare them with the Laws of the Hanse
Towns; compare them with the ancient Wisbury laws. In the last we find
that they were ocean democrats in those days. “If he strikes, he ought
to receive blow for blow.” Thus speak out the Wisbury laws concerning a
Gothland sea-captain.
In final reference to all that has been said in previous chapters
touching the severity and unusualness of the laws of the American Navy,
and the large authority vested in its commanding officers, be it here
observed, that White-Jacket is not unaware of the fact, that the
responsibility of an officer commanding at sea—whether in the merchant
service or the national marine—is unparalleled by that of any other
relation in which man may stand to man. Nor is he unmindful that both
wisdom and humanity dictate that, from the peculiarity of his position,
a sea-officer in command should be clothed with a degree of authority
and discretion inadmissible in any master ashore. But, at the same
time, these principles—recognised by all writers on maritime law—have
undoubtedly furnished warrant for clothing modern sea-commanders and
naval courts-martial with powers which exceed the due limits of reason
and necessity. Nor is this the only instance where right and salutary
principles, in themselves almost self-evident and infallible, have been
advanced in justification of things, which in themselves are just as
self-evidently wrong and pernicious.
Be it here, once and for all, understood, that no sentimental and
theoretic love for the common sailor; no romantic belief in that
peculiar noble-heartedness and exaggerated generosity of disposition
fictitiously imputed to him in novels; and no prevailing desire to gain
the reputation of being his friend, have actuated me in anything I have
said, in any part of this work, touching the gross oppression under
which I know that the sailors suffers. Indifferent as to who may be the
parties concerned, I but desire to see wrong things righted, and equal
justice administered to all.
Nor, as has been elsewhere hinted, is the general ignorance or
depravity of any race of men to be alleged as an apology for tyranny
over them. On the contrary, it cannot admit of a reasonable doubt, in
any unbiased mind conversant with the interior life of a man-of-war,
that most of the sailor iniquities practised therein are indirectly to
be ascribed to the morally debasing effects of the unjust, despotic,
and degrading laws under which the man-of-war’s-man lives.
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