latter character carried it hollow at this period of the voyage,
and triumphed over the Sanguine One at every meal, by inquiring
where he supposed the Great Western (which left New York a week
after us) was NOW: and where he supposed the ‘Cunard’ steam-packet
was NOW: and what he thought of sailing vessels, as compared with
steamships NOW: and so beset his life with pestilent attacks of
that kind, that he too was obliged to affect despondency, for very
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peace and quietude.
These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, but
there was still another source of interest. We carried in the
steerage nearly a hundred passengers: a little world of poverty:
and as we came to know individuals among them by sight, from
looking down upon the deck where they took the air in the daytime,
and cooked their food, and very often ate it too, we became curious
to know their histories, and with what expectations they had gone
out to America, and on what errands they were going home, and what
their circumstances were. The information we got on these heads
from the carpenter, who had charge of these people, was often of
the strangest kind. Some of them had been in America but three
days, some but three months, and some had gone out in the last
voyage of that very ship in which they were now returning home.
Others had sold their clothes to raise the passage-money, and had
hardly rags to cover them; others had no food, and lived upon the
charity of the rest: and one man, it was discovered nearly at the
end of the voyage, not before – for he kept his secret close, and
did not court compassion – had had no sustenance whatever but the
bones and scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the aftercabin
dinner, when they were put out to be washed.
The whole system of shipping and conveying these unfortunate
persons, is one that stands in need of thorough revision. If any
class deserve to be protected and assisted by the Government, it is
that class who are banished from their native land in search of the
bare means of subsistence. All that could be done for these poor
people by the great compassion and humanity of the captain and
officers was done, but they require much more. The law is bound,
at least upon the English side, to see that too many of them are
not put on board one ship: and that their accommodations are
decent: not demoralising, and profligate. It is bound, too, in
common humanity, to declare that no man shall be taken on board
without his stock of provisions being previously inspected by some
proper officer, and pronounced moderately sufficient for his
support upon the voyage. It is bound to provide, or to require
that there be provided, a medical attendant; whereas in these ships
there are none, though sickness of adults, and deaths of children,
on the passage, are matters of the very commonest occurrence.
Above all it is the duty of any Government, be it monarchy or
republic, to interpose and put an end to that system by which a
firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the whole
‘tween-decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people
as they can lay hold of, on any terms they can get, without the
smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the number
of berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but
their own immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst of the
vicious system: for, certain crimping agents of these houses, who
have a percentage on all the passengers they inveigle, are
constantly travelling about those districts where poverty and
discontent are rife, and tempting the credulous into more misery,
by holding out monstrous inducements to emigration which can never
be realised.
The history of every family we had on board was pretty much the
same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and begging, and selling
everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to New York,