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caprice of our naval officers. Our own experience warrants our saying thus much, and we say it too, defying contradiction. We have known officers, lacking every qualification which an officer should possess, allowed to inflict punishment, allowed to start, and confine men just whenever the whim or caprice of the moment should prompt them thereto. We have known men to be punished with the greatest severity for the most trivial offences; nay, we have known punishment to be inflicted without any offence having been committed: all the maintop-men have been flogged merely because one of them omitted to clear a point in letting out a reef; we have known involuntary smiles to be construed into contemptuous ridicule; we have known involuntary groans to be construed into growling; we have known dejection and sorrow to be construed into sulkiness; and we have known either, and all of them, to be visited with stripes! Such having been the case, who can wonder that it was necessary to drag our seamen on board a man-of-war as felons are dragged to a county gaol; and that such was the case, we appeal to every man-of-war's-man having the slightest pretension to be actuated by a love of truth and sincerity. What then, do we wish to be understood as asserting that this was universally the case? God forbid. We have known some ships, which compared with others, were as heaven compared to hell; and yet, truth bids us declare, that good usage was an exception rather than a general rule. We repeat, that our seamen do expect that his Royal Highness, the Lord High Admiral, will direct his royal attention to this matter; that he will evince as much solicitude for the comfort, good usage, and welfare of the seamen, as his lamented brother always evinced for the comfort, good usage, and well-being of the soldiers. We do most earnestly

implore his Royal Highness to make himself thoroughly acquainted with all the bearings of the question; we do entreat him to read the different essays which have been published on the subject of Impressment, especially those written by Messrs. MARRYAT, URQUHART, GRIFFITHS, and HEALY; and last, though not least, we do beseech him to allow the plan of that sailors' true and sincere friend, JEFFREY DENNIS, to occupy a portion of the royal attention. We have spared no pains to make ourselves acquainted with the feelings and opinions of our seamen as to these matters; and however we may subject ourselves to a charge of presumption, we cannot refrain from supplicating the attention of his Royal Highness, while we submit, for his most serious consideration, the result of our investigation as to the causes which have hitherto rendered it necessary to have recourse to the horrible system of Impressment, and our opinion as to remedial

measures.

First, then, as to the causes. Why was it necessary to have recourse to Impressment? Because volunteers enough could not be obtained! How so? The marine corps and the army found no difficulty in obtaining volunteers.-No, they did not; but recruiting and impressing are two very different things; and a recruiting party and a press-gang produce very different impressions upon the mind of a bye-stander. Besides, enlisting either in the army or the marines, is generally the effect of delusion of some sort or other; it is easy to persuade a man, already dissatisfied with his present lot, that he may do better by making an exchange. Recruiting parties generally appear to have a great deal of money at command, and to spend it very freely; they appear to be very happy, and to lead very happy lives: no wonder then that

an

ignorant green-horn, harshly treated by his parents, discarded

by his mistress, and laughed at by his companions, should become an easy dupe to the artifices of a thorough-paced recruiting serjeant, who can spin a good long yarn about the glory and happiness of a military life, about the nature of which, the poor raw devil of a recruit knows as much as a cow knows about a new shilling. With seamen, however, the case is very different they know all about the nature of the service, they know all about flogging and starting, they know all about unlimited service, they know all about the low rate of wages and the unequal distribution of prize money; and therefore, like old birds, they are not to be taken with chaff. Hence it is, that it has hitherto been necessary to have recourse to the worse than "blackbird catching *" system of Impressment. Intolerable and hardly endurable as was the discipline on board a man-of-war; cruel and unjust as it was to compel the seaman to give the state the benefit of his skill and intrepidity, for about one-third of what he could have obtained for it elsewhere; unreasonable as it assuredly was to expect that the plebeian sailor should evince a love of country, rarely evinced by his patrician officer; intolerable, cruel, and unreasonable as these things were, they were rendered doubly so in consequence of the more than life-time durability which they derived from the unlimited service to which our seamen were subjected. We knew several who were impressed on their return from India in 1793; who were sent out thither again immediately; who returned from thence in 1806; who were then, after an absence of fifteen years, allowed but fourteen days liberty; who were again sent out to India, where they remained until 1816, when they returned and were discharged, after a service of three and twenty years! aye, three and

*The Slave Trade, so nick-named.

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twenty years of compulsory service. Was not that enough to break the heart of any man, or set of men; more especially when they saw their Commanders obtaining leave of absence and liberty to return to England, for the benefit of their health, forsooth, ere they had served a third, or even a fourth of the time. Let us, however, hope, that the like will never occur again. Where much is given, much is required, and certainly expected. The Lord High Admiral possesses, in an eminent degree, the power of remedying these evils, and preventing their recurrence in future; and we cannot for one moment doubt that, with the power, he possesses the inclination to do it. It must be so. He cannot be otherwise than desirous that the BRITISH NAVY should be, as it ought always to have been, as much the pride of British seamen, as it has been the terror of Britain's foes.

Again, we repeat, that we do most earnestly hope that his Royal Highness will direct his most serious attention to this matter; for, although our navy has hitherto been the terror of our foes, it is possible that it may not always be so. Things are greatly altered since the close of the war. Navies are organizing and augmenting every where, and if Spain has ceased to be a great naval power, America has risen in her stead; and, while the latter promises to be more formidable than the former, there can be little doubt as to its being equally hostily disposed; while France is by no means backward in nurturing and encouraging the growth of her naval resources. Surely then it

behoves us to do all that can be done to render our naval service popular with our seamen; to effect this truly desirable object, it is necessary to introduce limited service, to allow our seamen to enter for any

period that may be suitable for the station whereon they are intended to serve, taking care to make the bounty commensurate with the time

lings per

Dutch, Danish, German, Prussian, Russian, and Sweedish trade should be stopped, and their seamen driven into our merchant service, as was the case in the last war, because the wonted nurseries for our seamen have been either totally neglected, or partially destroyed. Our merchant ships neither rear nor employ as many seamen as they ought to do; many of them have no apprentices at all, and very few of them carry as many as they ought, whilst their going to sea short-handed is a matter of perfect notoriety. Then, again, look at the effect which steam and canal navigation is likely to produce; while the new docks and bridges have necessarily reduced the number of watermen and lightermen, from whose body very great drafts were frequently made during the last war. We have conversed with some persons very well informed as to these matters, and they are decidedly of opinion with us, that the number of our seamen is alarmingly reduced; we do, therefore, most earnestly implore his Royal Highness, the Lord High Admiral, to allow these subjects to occupy his immediate attention, believing, as we do, that they ought to be promptly and efficiently dealt with. We are aware, that according to returns recently made by order of the House of Commons, we have 167,000 seamen employed in our mercantile marine; but if So, it is a very singular fact, that not more than £23,000 is annually received at Greenwich Hospital from the sixpences deducted from their wages monthly-therefore, if we reckon each man to be employed but ten months of the year, it would only take 92,000 men to pay it, instead of 167,000, which we think much nearer the mark. The subject is altogether fraught with the most serious consequences to the honour and safety of England, and merits the gravest attention; in good truth, the laws, customs, and usages, affecting the seamen of these realms,

for which they are willing to volunteer, and taking care also to keep good faith with them. Next to unlimited service, the discipline of the navy is most objectionable to our seamen, therefore, a more lenient system should be introduced; specific punishments should be affixed to specific offences: for each offence there should be a maximum and a minimum of punishment, and the officers should be allowed to mitigate, but not to aggravate the severity of a specific punishment. This would cause the officer to be viewed as the fountain of mercy, rather than the source of punishment; and would cause him to be loved and respected, instead of being dreaded and despised. In addition to these, the pay of our seamen ought to be increased: an able seaman ought to have eighteen-pence per diem, or two guineas per lunar month; an ordinary seaman fifteenpence per diem, or thirty-five shillunar month; and a landsman one shilling per diem, or twentyeight shillings per lunar month: this pay to increase three-pence per diem for additional seven every years of servitude. And as the life risked in defence of the country is alike equally precious to all who risk it, equal ought therefore to be the division of the spoil: the officers should have one moiety, and the people, that is to say, the seamen, marines, and boys, should have the other; and until this, or something very much like this, shall be the law, it will be useless to think about manning the navy without having recourse to Impressment. Nor is this all; we have strong doubts as to whether a sufficient number of seamen, to man a fleet of thirty ships of the line, could be obtained by any means at this time; at any rate, if it were necessary to equip such a fleet on a sudden emergency, our commercial marine must be laid up in ordinary, for it would be impossible to man both the military and commercial-marine, unless the

ought to be revised, altered, and amended, so as to render them adequate to the purposes for which they were originally intended. We cannot conclude this article without venturing to remind his Royal Highness, the Lord High Admiral, that it will not be officers, but sea

men, that we shall want in the event of a struggle for national honour or national safety; and that, therefore, the forecastle, rather than the quarter deck, ought to occupy his gracious attention.

G. W. B.

PORTRAIT OF H. R. H. THE DUKE OF CLARENCE, WITH TWO VIEWS OF THE ADMIRALTY.

To her navy has Great Britain been pre-eminently indebted for her place among the nations of the earth. Her insular position, her commercial genius, and her early and long attachment to the enterprises of navigation, all point out her navy as her appropriate defence, and the peculiar bulwark of her national glory. Without attempting to detract from the exploits and fame of her armies, who, under the royal heroes of Cressy and Agincourt-under the no less warlike genius of Marlborough and Wellington made their prowess memorable on the continent of Europe, we are bound to say, that her proudest recollections are connected with the still more splendid annals of her maritime history. The glories of Blenheim and Waterloo, as well as most others of her continental victories, were more or less participated in by her allies; but it is on the seas that she fought the world single-handed, until she swept every hostile flag from the face of that, her darling element. From the day when the hopes of Rome, and the ambition of Philip, were scattered by the thunders that strewed her insulted shores with the wreck of the invincible Armada, down to the extinction of the naval power of France and Spain, at the battle of Trafalgar, her maritime records contain a series of daring and brilliant achievements, of which the world afforded no previous example. British sailors only ceased to fight when they ceased to have enemies to con

quer—not a fleet remained in Europe
to contend with them the dominion
of the seas; and Nelson had the
glory, in the hour of death, to see
the flag of a thousand battles float
in undisputed sovereignty over the
ocean. That naval superiority, and
the heroism which inspired it, ought
to be cherished with peculiar care
by a people who owe more to the
prowess of their fleets than any other
people that ever existed. But, what
only gained strength from the storms
of war, moulders in the sunshine of
peace; not having the same danger
to guard against, the great and an-
cient bulwark of the empire is not
looked upon with the same deep in.
terest which it was. The necessity
of preferring men for meritorious
services being supposed to exist no
longer, a system of vicious patron-
age has been degrading, for some
time, this, the noblest defence of
the throne and nation. Experience,
ability, and length of service, if not
assisted by family connection, are
put aside to give honours and pro-
motion to the more favored candi-
dates, whose qualifications are of a
different nature. Veterans, who
have fought and bled in clime,
every
are superseded by stripling incapa-
city; and they have the mortifica-
tion, in the decline of life, not only
to find their services forgotten, but
to see the rewards for which they
have fought in vain lavished, with-
out shame or compunction,
whole nursery of patronage; such,
until very lately, was the practice.

on the

He

A promise of a change of system has been made in the present session, during a debate on the naval estimates. That such a change will take place, if it have not already, we have the greater hope since the appointment of the Duke of Clarence as Lord High Admiral. stands pledged to it, as he was known to have reprobated, on many occasions the system which we condemn. Besides, being the heir-presumptive to the crown, he has a greater interest in the preservation of an establishment which has ever contributed so much to the strength and ornament of the monarchy, than a person who had no such connection with the line of succession. Having, also, been early trained in the sea service himself, he knows the Navy both as it has been, and as it is-he knows both its defects and capabilities, and we trust that he will restore that fair and equitable distribution of honours and preferment which inspires brave men with a confidence in all dangers and enterprizes, that, whatever fortune their heroic protection of the national honour may have, their services will not be forgotten by their country. Thus will he have discharged that office with fidelity and effect which has been committed to his charge by his Sovereign and brother; and thus will he have raised up a source of strength and grandeur for himself at that day, we hope far removed, when he shall sit on the Throne of his ancestors. If he only takes his brother, the lamented Duke of York, for his model in attention to business, conciliation of manners, firmness of purpose, and the just and discriminating government of gallant men, the Navy of England, in the event of a future war, will be all that it has been in the scenes of its former glory.

We will now proceed to give a brief description of the two pic tures relative to this subject. The first view is inscribed, "Things as they were" the other, "Things as

they ought to be." They are from
the pencil of an eminent marine
painter, who evidently does not rely
so much on the brilliancy of his co-
louring as the fidelity of his delinea-
tions.

FIRST VIEW-THINGS AS THEY
WERE.

Seated in an easy chair in his official apartment, with as much solemn importance of look as if the waters of the ocean rolled obedient to his nod, we behold Lord Melville. There is a table before him, on which there are there several papers, some of which he appears to be glancing his eye over, and a number of gaily dressed young men and boys are pressing round his chair, towards whom the stern dulness of his countenance relaxes into a sort of northern smile. These persons appear to be making application for appointments, or rather they seem to have come to receive them as a matter of course, in the confidence that their friends have made all smooth before them. The papers which his Lordship is inspecting, we at first supposed to be testimonials of some sort of merit or other; but, on looking closer, we perceived that they were family pedigrees and maps of parliamentary connection, by which he can ascertain exactly the number and value of the aristocratic patrons whom he is to oblige, and the effect that a judicious dispensation of preferment may have on the decisions of the House when the supplies of the year come to be voted. One of the young gentlemen, who puts over his hand to the table to take up a lieutenant's commission, has a hoop in the other, which he had just been trundling; another of the successful candidates for naval promotion is putting his peg-top into his hat before he advances in front to re

ceive the discerning congratulation of his Lordship; and a third, who will probably go out of the room with the rank of commander, is stowing away his penny trumpet,

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