The Liberator

From the Boston Spy.

Sailors' Rights.

Some very judicious articles on the subject of seamen, have recently appeared in the Boston Courier, under the signature of Mentor. There is not such another abused class among the free people of the United States, nor one which more imperiously calls for the active interference in its behalf of the benevolent and humane.

There have indeed been formed, within the last ten years, some societies, which have done something for seamen; but unfortunately, the leading members in these associations have been ship-masters and ship-owners, men accustomed to the exercise of absolute and despotic authority over sailors, and whose chief object appears to have been not to make men of them, but humble, obedient and zealous servants. For this purpose, religion has been resorted to, and bethel churches have been built, and seamen's ministers maintained, pretty much upon the same principle, that certain pious slaveholders at the South, preach to, and catechise their slaves, the chief burden of their exhortations being those virtues so useful to themselves, of humility, obedience, industry, &c. &c.

This, we apprehend, is beginning at the wrong end. Before undertaking to make religious men of the sailors, the first object ought to be to make them men. That concern for people's souls is very much to be suspected, which is wholly careless of their temporal well-being. As to any great moral reform among the sailors, it is ridiculous to expect it, until they can be protected against the despotic authority, which crushes them and keeps them down, and which is so well calculated to destroy all the better feelings of the heart.

The maritime code of the United States is a disgrace to us, almost as great as the legalized toleration of slavery. Notwithstanding our pretended love of freedom and equality, notwithstanding the war which was undertaken, nominally for the defence of 'sailor's rights,' the authority assumed and exercised by ship-owners and ship-masters, over seamen, is of the most despotic kind, and, in fact, is little short of being wholly irresponsible; for the courts and judges are in the interest of the ship-owner and ship-master, and if a sailor can succeed in getting his case before a court, that court is always ready to stretch a point or two against him, and five or six points in favor of his opponents. To get his case before a court at all, the sailor is generally obliged to employ some shark of a lawyer—since respectable lawyers do not find it for their interest to undertake the case of poor sailors—who, even if any damages are recovered, generally sponges him out of the whole, and out of any other money that he may happen to have.

The suggestion of Mentor, that a society ought to be formed for the protection of sailors, to secure them in the enjoyment of such legal rights as they now have, and to procure for them those which they are now deprived of—a society from which all ship-owners and ship-masters should be expressly excluded—this is a suggestion well worthy the consideration of the benevolent and humane, and one which we hope to see speedily acted upon. It will prove a vain attempt to secure the sailor from the clutches of landlords and grog-shop keepers, until we have first made a man of him, protected him against the multiplied abuses and oppressions to which he is now subject, and taught him to respect himself.