A shocking case of cruelty, though too common, we fear,
at sea, is reported from Falmouth. Charles Cooper, an apprentice, went on board the barque Maggie Dixon,' " stout, healthy, and good-tempered ;" but the captain, R. Proudfoot, the mate, W. Strickland, and the boatswain, J. Murray, are said by the sailors to have taken a dislike to him, and the lad, according to the evidence, was constantly tortured, compelled to work twelve hours at a time, and starved. The boatswain would rub the ropes across his nose till it bled ; on one occasion, his head was tarred ; on another, he was sent aloft twelve times at midnight, and made to crow like a cock ; on another, he was scrubbed with a broom and salt water thrown over him. At last, when too ill to work and covered with sores, he was sent aloft, fell off, and was drowned. The magistrates committed the prisoners for trial for manslaughter, holding, we suppose, that a trial for murder would fail, because the immediate cause of death, the order to go aloft, was not an illegal act, though it might be an oppressive one. Of course, the officers' side in this case is not yet heard, and they may be innocent ; but cases of the kind alleged, which are frequent, show the necessity of adding at least one new definition to the crime of murder. Torture ending in death, though not producing it, is morally, and should be legally, murder.
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