nature, if he hasn't any. If you make a
drudge and a beast of him, you can't do him much good by preaching at
him. The working of the present system is, that there are afloat a set
of fellows who are a sort of no-countrymen. Like the beach-combers of
the Pacific, they have neither country, home, nor friends, and are as
different from the old class of American sailors as the _condottiere_
from the loyal soldier. Let the navigation-laws be enforced first of
all, and see that the due proportion of the crews of every ship be
native-born. Let the custom-house protections be no longer the farce
they are,--where a man who talks of "awlin haft the main tack" is set
down as a native of Martha's Vineyard, and his messmate, who couldn't
say "peas" without betraying County Cork, is permitted to hail from the
interior of Pennsylvania. Let the ship-owners combine (it is for their
interest) to do away with the whole body of shipping-agents, middlemen,
and land-sharks. Jack will take his pleasure ashore,--you can't help
that; and perhaps so would you, Sir, after six months of "old horse"
and stony biscuit, with a leaky forecastle and a shorthanded crew. Jack
will take his pleasure, and that in ways we may all of us object to;
but, for Heaven's sake, break up a system of which the whole object is
to degrade the man into the mere hack of a set of shore harpies. Do not
leave him in the hands of those whom you are now permitting to combine
with you to clear him out as swiftly as possible, and then dispatch him
to sea. Let the captains ship their own crews on board the ship, and do
away with the system of advances. But, at any rate, do learn to treat
the sailor as if he were not altogether a fool. He has sense, plenty of
it, shrewd, strong, common sense, and more real gentlemanly feeling
than we on shore generally suppose, a good deal of faith, and certain
standing principles of sea-morality. But at the same time he has
prejudices and whims utterly unaccountable to men living on shore. He
will forfeit one or two hundred dollars of wages to run from a ship and
captain with which he can find no fault. He will ship the next day in a
worse craft for smaller wages. You cannot understand his impulses and
moods and grievances till you see them from a forecastle point of view.

It may be that Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works
and improvements of a thousand years,--the "wave line," the spar, the
sail, and all,--and with them th