CHAPTER IV.

WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE.



In theory an authority for the taking of seafaring men only, the
press-warrant was in practice invested with all the force of a Writ of
Quo Warranto requiring every able-bodied male adult to show by what
right he remained at large. The difference between the theory and the
practice of pressing was consequently as wide as the poles.

While the primary and ostensible objective of the impress remained
always what it had been from the outset, the seaman who had few if any
land-ties except those of blood or sex, from this root principle there
sprang up a very Upas tree of pretension, whose noxious branches
overspread practically every section of the community. Hence the
press-gang, the embodiment of this pretension, eventually threw aside
ostence and took its pick of all who came its way, let their
occupation or position be what it might. It was no duty of the
gangsman to employ his hanger in splitting hairs. "First catch your
man," was for him the greatest of all the commandments. Discrimination
was for his masters. The weeding out could be done when the pressing
was over.

The classes hardest hit by this lamentable want of discrimination were
the classes engaged in trade. "Mr. Coventry," wrote Pepys some four
years after the Restoration, "showed how the medium of the men the