to make him honest by placing confidence in
him instead of treating him like a rogue from
the beginning."

Even when the poor fellow has scraped
together for himself and paid for a good bag of
clothes, he cannot trust in his continued right
to wear them. As seaman rigger Burney put it
to the gentlemen of the commission, " One ship
will, perhaps, be paid off, and you have a good
bag of clothes, according to that captain's
uniform; and then you may have jackets in
another vessel instead of the cloth frock or
loose serge, and a man has not got those things,
and it runs away with a pound or two from his
pocket, and that is taken out of his advance."
Thus the men pay for the whims of their captains.

Then again the recruit was compelled to fit
out his own little mess by contributing his
share to the utensils. Sometimes the ship is
paid off in a week after the four or five shillings
have been spent upon this, and then there is so
much dead loss to be complained of. But we
mention the mess traps, chiefly to connect with
them a little narrative which shall serve as our
last illustration of the way to make sure that
you don't get the right men. We are fairly
embarrassed by the variety and extent of our
material: which is, indeed, co-extensive with our
whole military and naval system: but let this
suffice.

One of the discoveries made by the commission
of 'fifty-eight, was, that her Majesty's seamen did
not—and they still do not—get enough to eat.
Routine had not perceived it, either on board ship
or in any oflice; even the men accepted the short
rations as a law of fate, and made the best of
them. A pound of bread a day and a pound of
meat weighed with the fat and bone before cook-
ing, was, in no other English sea service, reckoned
to be food sufficient for a working sailor. With
perfect unanimity, the common seamen examined
before the commission owned that they could
eat more bread, and told how the bread served
out twice a week had sometimes been all eaten
up on delivery, and was not seldom all gone on
the Saturday night: leaving them without any
food but their dinner meat, till Monday evening.
The men were supposed to eat part of the pound
of bread with their breakfasts, part with their
dinners, and part when they drank their evening
tea; all going to bed supperless.

To be sure, as seaman rigger Burney said,
"The next thing is your vegetables; you are
allowed half a pound—what is that? It is only
pumpkins what you get in a foreign place."
The good fellows did not whine over the matter,
but they told the facts, as they were accepted
on board ship. The pound of meat shrinks in
the copper, and the ship's law is that when the
shrinkage is of a pound to half a pound, or less,
more may be served out. But if there be an
ounce less than half the original weight gone,
the sailors must take what they have and be
thankful. Then, if the mess is accustomed to
put back some of its meat, as it often will,
denying itself some of the salt pork to get the
value of it, and spend that at the next port on
little dainties for which the stomach naturally
craves—oranges, milk, and fresh potatoes—the
habit of putting back is assumed in evidence
that the men have more than they can eat, and
they get no redress of short commons by appeal
to quarter-deck. It is upon the prevalent
habit among messes of taking money instead of
a small part set aside out of the ship's food, in
order that a little fund may be made for
furnishing the mess with fruits and other solaces—
for which, in fact, it is Nature herself that craves
—it is upon this habit that Routine founds its
absurd belief in the actual overfeeding of ships'
crews. The men of the Royal Albert, said a
triumphant pamphleteer the other day, take a
daily average of three-halfpence a piece for the
food they do not eat. The argument requires
no answer. The commission, indeed, distinctly
recommended the addition (which has not been
made) of a quarter of a pound to the men's
daily rations of meat, and recited, for the
purpose of refuting it, this very argument of
"savings." One fact ascertained by the
commissioners was, that " a considerable proportion of
the savings is due, not to the men, but to the
officers, who very generally save the whole, or
nearly the whole, of their allowance." But there
was Sir John Liddell, Director-General of the
Medical Department of the Navy, who had only
to read the dietary, and think over it for one
quarter of a minute, to be perfectly assured that
it was under-feeding the young working seamen,
ready to testify that he thought the system of
dieting very good; there might be improvement,
he thought, as to preserved fruits and dried
vegetables. He owned that salt pork dwindles in
boiling to almost a third, but he thought the supply
adequate. What was lost, went into the soup.

Not so. Much of the loss is of fat removed
as scum, which clearly belongs to the sailors;
two witnesses showed how, by the sale of it as
kitchen stuff, not only had the men been able to
obtain their " mess-traps," but also a variety of
little comforts. "The expense," said Captain
Mends, "of fitting out the messes is no small
item out of a man's pay, and is of course a
mortgage on his two months' advance. Why
should not a fund be raised out of the sale of
the skimmings, which is the absolute property of
the men, arising as it does out of the fat of their
own meat? Before the present regulations
respecting it were issued, I proved it sufficient, in
a ship of the line, to provide all their mess-
traps, including the tin soup-kettles and pie-
dishes, and two block-tin cases for writing-
paper, and odds and ends for each mess. I was
able, also, out of the same fund, to make good
to the men all losses or injuries sustained by
them in their clothing, such as hats or caps
blown off at sea, or clothes injured on the lines,
or blown away, or clothes torn while at work
aloft in the zealous execution of their duty. This
system was greatly appreciated by the men."

Of course it was. It was a true part of the
art of getting men, born of the spirit that alone
can bind men heartily to any service.

But the witness went on to say: " Now the