not for the difference of pay, they would as lief
man the guns of an English ship as those of an American or Frenchman.
Nevertheless, it was evident, that as for any high-toned patriotic
feeling, there was comparatively very little--hardly any of it--evinced
by our sailors as a body. Upon reflection, this was not to be wondered
at. From their roving career, and the sundering of all domestic ties,
many sailors, all the world over, are like the "Free Companions," who
some centuries ago wandered over Europe, ready to fight the battles of
any prince who could purchase their swords. The only patriotism is born
and nurtured in a stationary home, and upon an immovable hearth-stone;
but the man-of-war's-man, though in his voyagings he weds the two Poles
and brings both Indies together, yet, let him wander where he will, he
carries his one only home along with him: that home is his hammock.
"_Born under a gun, and educated on the bowsprit_," according to a
phrase of his own, the man-of-war-man rolls round the world like a
billow, ready to mix with any sea, or be sucked down to death in the
maelstrom of any war.

Yet more. The dread of the general discipline of a man-of-war; the
special obnoxiousness of the gangway; the protracted confinement on
board ship, with so few "liberty days;" and the pittance of pay (much
less than what can always be had in the Merchant Service), these things
contrive to deter from the navies of all countries by far the majority
of their best seamen. This will be obvious, when the following
statistical facts, taken from Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, are
considered. At one period, upon the Peace Establishment, the number of
men employed in the English Navy was 25,000; at the same time, the
English Merchant Service was employing 118,952. But while the
necessities of a merchantman render it indispensable that the greater
part of her crew be able seamen, the circumstances of a man-of-war
admit of her mustering a crowd of landsmen, soldiers, and boys in her
service. By a statement of Captain Marryat's, in his pamphlet (A. D.
1822) "On the Abolition of Impressment," it appears that, at the close
of the Bonaparte wars, a full third of all the crews of his Majesty's
fleets consisted of landsmen and boys.

Far from entering with enthusiasm into the king's ships when their
country were menaced, the great body of English seamen, appalled at the
discipline of the Navy, adopted unheard-of devices to escape its