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CHAPTER XX.
Other Grievances.
Although the grievances that have been considered
were undoubtedly the most important, the seamen suffered
other hardships which helped to arouse their resentment.
Perhaps the most notable evil was the system of impressment.
Popular imagination, instructed, and not altogether
misinformed by cartoons and nautical novels, has
conceived the press-gang to
be one of the most vicious
institutions of the eighteenth century. It is surprising,
therefore, to find that the mutineers made no attempt to
abolish impressment, and, in their negotiations with the
Admiralty, showed no sign that they regarded the system
as unjust or undesirable. The only mention of the
subject that appears in the official records is a demand
of the Nore mutineers that two months' wages should
be paid in advance to pressed men so that they might
provide themselves with an outfit of slops. 1 It might be
inferred from their silence that they found no fault with
the system and were willing that it should continue.
Certainly the press-gang did not appear to the seamen of
the eighteenth century to be such an evil and tyrannical
device as the modern mind imagines it to have been.
If the press-gang were introduced at the present time it
would be met with a storm of indignation, and it is
difficult
to realize that the institution was less hateful to
earlier generations. But a new imposition or duty is
always more irksome than an imposition or duty that is
familiar and expected. 2 In the eighteenth century im-
1. Art. 5 of the original demands (Ann. Reg., u.s.).
2. E.g., the income-tax which was at first only tolerated asatemporary
expedient, but is now regarded as a particularly fair and satisfactory
form of taxation.