DESTRUCTION OF THE "COSPATRICK."

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 316, 19 March 1875, Page 3

DESTRUCTION OF THE "COSPATRICK."

Some light has been thrown on the circumstances which contributed to the destruction of the " Oospatrick." 1t is stated that the ship carried a considerable amount of highly inflammable cargo in the shape of spirits, and that the was provided so insufficiently with boats that under the most favorable conditions it wo'dd have been impossible to save the lives of much more :han a fourth of the people on board. This information was contained in a letter from Governor Janisch, of Bt. Helena' The censure which these facts imply, says the 'Times,' is to be'read as condemnatory of a system, not of the individual owners. It is worth while to examine the meaning of this proposition. A ship carrying over 400 persons is loaded with highly inflammable inateri a. She is also so deficiently provided with boats that some two hundred lives at least must certainly be sacrificed should fire reach: this cargo,-while in all probability many more must share the same fate. We are here assuming the statements made by Governor Janisch to be materially correct. It may turn out that the information he received as to the ship carrying a quantity of spirits, and his estimate of the capability of her boats of saving life, were not well-founded. But the statement /offacts in his letter has not been questioned so far as to affect the inferences that may be drawn from it; and one natural inference is that somebody is to blame for the putting into the same ship a dangerous cargo, and a large number of human beings, and totally inadequate means of saving their lives should firebreak out. The ' Times ' suggests that whatever blame : s due must be thrown not upon individuals but upon a system.

To hold a system responsible for a catastrophe can only mean that, the catastrophe is due to practices regularly followed, by a number of people. No doubt in some cases thi3 exculpation of individuals is complete—as where the custom, though tending to bad results, is a consequence of

ignorance. For instance, at a time when . there was a general ignorance of medicine, and when it was a custom to bleed for almost every nilimmt, a physician, who, by following the custom, had aggravated instead of alleviating a malady, might fairly be held irresponsible morally, on the ground that he was the victim of an erroneous system. So, to take another instance, in days when it was believed that the imposition of certain barbarous penalties upon usurers was beneficial, an honest legislator who by imposing them increased instead of diminished the rate of usurious interest can hardly now be regained as morally responsible ior the evil he committed, lie was the victim of ignorance But the case is very different where a certain class, trade, or profession sanctions unnecessary practices "which knowledge and expeVience have taught us are attended with-danger. A-man knowing good and evil does not absolve himself ■from the guilt of a bad action because .he sins in company] with others. We have ,to hear many arguments' in extenuation of the culpability of railway management, but we have not yet been asked to believe that a board of directors should be held irresponsible for the consequences of negligence and penuriousness because penuriousness and negligence are fashionable vices in the management of most other railways in the kingdom. Such an at tempt at justification is a fatally lax mode of washing away the stain of unpleasant consequences. No doubt long-continued inherited acquiescence by a body of men in any custom will blunt their feelings as to its true character, and the moral slumber which ensues may perhaps be pleaded as some, excuse for individual shortcomings ; but if to surround human life with unnecessary dangers, and to deprive it of necessary safe-guards against them, is not an. act for which individuals who know what they are doing are morally responsible, then it is difficult to see what, in' such a case, will constitute moral responsibility at all. The English may fairly be called a nation of shopkeepers in the discreditable not in the honorable sense attaching to the expression, if success in commercial enterprise comes to be advocated as paramount to the-requirements of humanity.... The public is accustomed to hear such remarks as these directed against the interested action of men or of bodies of men whose policy affects them nearly and continually. Railway companies in particular have been much at - tacked in this spirit, and with justice. Negligence or selfishness in dealing with human life, whether it be found in shipowners or in railway owners, is equally culpable. It must be borne in mind that we are not censuring any man or'any body of men , we are aiguing upon a hypotheti cal case, to meet what appears to be . in the abstract a wrong view of moral responsibility. ; The facts which would justify the application of these remarks to a particular case have not been proved ' Pall Mall Gazette.' "