By these press-gangs (so-called) the fire-ships are often supplied with victims snatched from the unprotected Low-Castes; and the Upper enjoy the idle and luxurious security which they rob from the blood and limbs of the friendless and obscure.
This unjust custom, frightful in every aspect, receives the approbation and applause of the Barbarians very generally, who say, "Let the fellows thank their stars that they can receive the Queen's money and fight for her! Then look at the chance for prize!" By prize, they mean some pitiful fraction of the plunder taken. The stars are referred to, because the Barbarians fancy that everybody is born under the influence of some star!
I once noticed a painting, wherein a young man and maiden were represented as just leaving a Temple, where they had been married. Both were nicely dressed, young and handsome, with roses and nosegays [bong-no]. They were walking arm-in-arm, happily engrossed in each other, when, from an alley, out springs a black-whiskered bully [kob-bo] with drawn cutlass, followed by a band of half-drunken, armed wretches, wearing the sea-garb of the Queen; he grasps the young man roughly by the collar—the picture attempts to show the indignant surprise of the man, the clinging tenderness, fear, and horror of the maid! But more striking to an observing stranger than even these, is the merely passing curiosity of the people moving about! The scene to them is not so novel. It is merely a press-gang doing its lawful work—if, by chance, a wrong sort of man be seized, it is none of the affair of these indifferent passers.
Probably, the picture means to excite some compassionate interest by showing how very hard the press-gang system may work!
It would be vain to call the least attention to the matter, if the victim were merely a common labourer; even the accessories of wife and children would not raise the scene into one of compassion. Nor does the representation, for one moment, cause any reflection upon a system wherein bullies [kob-toe] are employed to waylay and carry off unbefriended and unoffending men, at so much per head! For, besides the regular pay, a reward is given for each victim captured!
LONDON.