American consul requires that the accused be
delivered up to him, in order that he may be
sent to the United States for trial. This is the
operation of the Extradition Treaty of the year
forty-two, but practically it occurs only with
respect to the crimes of murder, or assault with
intent to murder, robbery, piracy, arson, forgery,
and the utterance of forged papers. Ordinary
assault cases, even when they issue in
manslaughter, cannot be tried in England. Neither
are they despatched for trial to the other
side of the Atlantic, and may therefore be
committed with impunity. Three years ago,
the body of a man, killed by the third mate
of an American ship, was brought ashore at
Liverpool. A coroner's jury sat upon it, and
brought in a verdict of manslaughter. The
American consul applied for the prisoner, in
order that he might be sent back to America for
trial. But our Home-office decided that the
offence was not referred to in the treaty. The
offender, therefore, was set free.

Even when the consul has his prisoner, so
that he may enforce his return home for trial,
he cannot compel all the witnesses to recross
the Atlantic for the sake of giving evidence.
They possibly may have, or fancy that they
have, more profitable business to be looked after
elsewhere; or they may sail back, and yet be
lost for purposes of justice. In the middle of
last December, the Etiwan, an American ship,
was in the Mersey, not abreast of Liverpool,
but about two miles and a half north-west of
the Crosby light-ship. A seaman on board
attacked the second mate fiercely, stabbed him
twice on the cheek, and nine times more on other
parts of the body. The prisoner's defence was
that the English court had no jurisdiction over
him, because a ship two or three miles north-
west of the Crosby light-ship was not legally
within the port of Liverpool. This plea, after
much discussion, was allowed to be good, and
the prisoner was sent for trial to America, at
an expense of a hundred pounds. Two sufficient
witnesses were despatched with him. The
witnesses, having landed, disappeared on business
of their own, and the ruffian, after all the trouble
taken, had to be discharged from custody.

A second mate, who by knocking a man off
the yard had caused his death, was to be sent
back to the United States for trial; but no
offers of the consul could persuade the material
witness, who was a Spaniard, to go back and
give his evidence. In every such case the
prisoner must go unpunished.

The great mass, however, of the unpunished
offences are the ordinary cruelties that can never
come before a court at all; being beyond the
jurisdiction of our English law, and below notice in a
treaty. The American consul has, indeed, a power
of his own to take revenge upon the pocket of
the captain (and the captain only) in a vessel on
board of which a man has suffered wrongful hurt.
He may compel him to pay three months' extra
wages to the sufferer. Yet it is only in a few
cases that the captain has been himself the
offender, and, in many cases, it is he who has
protected some poor victim from a brutal mate.
Again, for injured men sent to the hospital as
consul's cases from a ship newly come into port,
the consul pays twelve shillings a week, which
he recovers from the captain. This arrangement,
of course, overlooks all minor cases, and
leaves many wretched sufferers to find their way,
not to the hospital, but to the workhouse. In
Liverpool, there is a Society of Friends of
Foreigners in Distress, which is in the habit of
attending to some cases of ill-usage that do not
reach the hospital.

Many of these victims of cruelty were no
doubt disappointed emigrants, or other wretched
men, ignorant of seamanship, who had engaged
rashly to work their passage home, and suffered
heavily for their incompetence. Others are men,
not seamen, who were trepanned on board by
vessels pressed for time and short of hands. The
Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress met
with a broken-down German who had been sent
as a clerk on business to a vessel and detained
in it; another German was engaged as a steward;
others were engaged as surgeons. All were
crushed with sailors' work.

What cruelty on shipboard is, we have all heard
again and again. Our present purpose is, to assist
in urging that it shall not be committed with
impunity. Let there be no right of outlawry
pertaining to the open sea.

A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

IN FIVE PARTS.

PART III.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

IT was at the end of a fortnight spent in an
hotel—a good hotel, and in a fashionable quarter
—that there entered my head a thought, which
had previously kept its distance.

It was at the end of a fortnight that it slowly
dawned upon me that, what with dinners at
expensive cafés, what with orchestra stalls, what
with irresistible gloves, mechanical hats,
opportunities of getting boots of French leather and
similar mad extravagances, I was spending a
great deal of money. And the hotel bill! Let
us face that bill at once. Let us see where we are.

I received that bill with a calm and guarded
countenance, with a gentlemanly air and a gay
smile. But my soul sank within me aghast at
its proportions. Its proportions, indeed, were
such that it became highly desirable that now
for a season I should economise exceedingly.
So much the better. It has been said that a
man may live cheaply in Paris. I will make
trial of the experiment. Let me live no longer
in hotels. Let me seek a lodgment. Let me
rough it. Let me hug penury to my soul. Let
my pomp take physic, and let me expose myself
to feel what wretches feel. My mails are made,
my bill is paid, and a sweet little column of
napoleons—a little pile of gold—and I have parted
company for ever. Now let me prowl about
unfashionable quarters, and when I have secured
a room of cheapness, let me return for my
luggage, and have it out with squalor.