ciless violence and ferocity that the Cossacks or the Malays might have been ashamed to acknowledge. People were not then satisfied with robbing the ship, but would fall upon the unfortunate crew, carry off their little property, tear their clothes from their backs, and, if they resisted, knock them on the head. Such barbarities are now, thank God, seldom heard of. I have witnessed many shipwrecks on various parts of the coast, but certainly never saw ill usage or inhumanity of any kind extended towards the crews. On the contrary, the first consideration, with all denominations of people, even those who would be most forward to plunder when the season came, was invariably to make every effort in their power for the preservation of lives. In this generous labour, which is engaged in without a thought of reward, I have seen so many examples of the noblest courage and self-devotedness on the part of the

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rogues and vagrants" of the sea-side, that I am almost willing to forgive them the ordinary trespasses of their trade. As the Reviewer said of Lord Byron's Corsair, they have "every virtue under heaven except common honesty." It is the ship and her cargo alone that they regard with hostility; and even these, in the present improved state of feeling on such subjects, are not condemned till they have had what is considered a fair trial. As long as a vessel holds together, and can be called a ship, they admit that it fairly belongs to its proprietors; but as soon as it is broken up and scattered

in fragments along the shore, it is nothing—its identity is gone for ever. In this state of dissolution, they consider it as at once emancipated from all exclusive claims of ownership, and cast, beyond all recognised boundaries of law and right, upon some waste element, as it were, or scramble-land, open to any adventurer who fears not the sea and surf. They do not feel that plunder in such a case is chargeable with any degree of cruelty and injustice; the sea, they say, has done all the mischief; we only take what it pleases to send us; and, whether it be lobsters and flat-fish, or pieces of plank and coils of rope, we hold ourselves equally innocent. You might tell them, that a considerable part of a wreck might be collected for the benefit of the owners; but you cannot tell them what part; and, as they know that a considerable portion of it is likely to be swept away by the sea, they choose to think that all which they save is justly made their own. A certain quantity may or may not be recovered-nothing can be more doubtful-and in the meantime, the whole lies in so loose a state, so unnoticed and unguarded, so much in short like something lost, that they cannot help believing that it belongs to any body who will stoop to pick it up. "We found it," they say, "and there can be no harm in that." You may tell them too that if there is no other owner, the lord of the manor has the first turn; but the reasonableness of his priority is quite beyond their comprehension; and, to speak honestly,

I do not wonder at it. His estate, they think terminates with the land, and has no continuity, as far as interest and authority are concerned, with the shore: that belongs to the sea, which belongs, they contend, to everybody. How far does the lord paramount push his dominions? To low watermark! High-water mark is his natural frontier, according to the popular opinion; and I am greatly inclined to agree with it. If he has a just title to every old cask and plank that is cast on the shore by the sea, he may with equal propriety, as it appears to me, claim all its natural produce, the fish, as far as I know not what mark; and in this manner, our sovereign squires round the kingdom might come to the grace of parcelling out the ocean among themselves, as they have parcelled out the air, and make it as criminal to pick up a periwinkle as to shoot a partridge.

The occasional interference of lords of manors, with their arrogant and unintelligible pretensions, tends rather to quicken, than restrain, the general eagerness for plunder. "If you come to that, what business has he with it more than another?" I have been often asked by some of these rapacious people, and I never could answer them to their satisfaction Convince them that "wrecking" is or my own. robbery, and they will cheerfully desist from the practice. It is by no means the needy and knavish alone whom you may see hovering with eager eyes and ready hands about a stranded ship: men of

substance and character, who hold their heads high in the world, attend vestries, and sit upon juries, join in the pursuit without scruple or shame. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, the whole aristocracy of the village, are perfectly prepared to pick up any little portable God-send on the sea-shore, that may come in their way; though they are all, undoubtedly, people who would scorn to soil their hands by any of the vulgar modes of plain and admitted dishonesty. Mr.- our respectable blacksmith and bell-hanger, would not hesitate to find property belonging to a wreck, to the amount of twenty or thirty pounds, or more, if he could be so lucky; but he would sooner die, I am sure, than pick a neighbour's pocket of a penny, and would combine with all honest men to hoot down the wretch who could be guilty of such a deed, as too infamous for this earth.

Ignorance and prejudice, confirmed and endeared by immemorial habit, are the cause of these moral inconsistencies; and they are the more obstinate, no doubt, as they happen to have a little present profit on their side. All such blinds will eventually be cleared away, I trust, by that "growing intelligence of the age," which we hear so much of just now, but which has not yet got quite so far as the coast. Severe laws and violent punishments would have no effect: as they would not enlighten the minds of "wreckers," they would be regarded only, like the game-laws and the penalties against smug

gling, as tyrannical exertions of authority against the poor man's right of a livelihood. The victory will not be speedy or easy, whatever are the means applied; as any one may convince himself, who will take the trouble to reason a little with a "wrecker" on the nature of his opinions. I have done my best as a good subject, to open the eyes of such offenders as have fallen in my way; but, whatever I may be fit for, I have not discovered in myself any gift of making converts amongst them. I talk to them of doing as they would be done by; and they answer me, that they will have no such new-fangled doctrines on the sea shore; and that what was no sin with their fathers before them, can scarcely be sin in them. What! not let a man take what the sea sends?-there will be no living in England then, if this is to be law. They talk of a good wreckseason as of a good herring-season, and thank Providence for both.