His CAPTORS. 253 



Appeal to Fathers, Ship-owners, Captains, Seamen, &c. 



whose sons go down upon the sea in ships, pro- 

 test against a practice by which those sons are 

 rendered Sabbath breakers, and the high, home- 

 bred estimate in which they have been taught 

 to hold that sacred day obliterated, and the way 

 opened for any and all degrees of moral depra- 

 vation to which that sin is the natural initia- 

 tion. 



Let ship-owners, as they fear God and have 

 a regard to the judgment, separate themselves 

 from this iniquity by positively instructing their 

 agents not to whale on the Sabbath day. We 

 call upon captains and officers to exercise the 

 manly independence and regard for their rights 

 to say that they will not sail except in Sabbath- 

 keeping ships; and we call upon the men to 

 stipulate beforehand that they shall be allowed 

 the rest of the Sabbath. We call upon the ed- 

 itors of respectable journals, in whaling ports 

 and elsewhere, to discuss the propriety of this 

 practice. We ask religious men and good cit- 

 izens there to express, in the intercourse of pri- 

 vate life, their sense of the wrongfulness of so 

 plain a desecration of the Christian Sabbath. 



It is every where popular, at this day, to praise 

 our Puritan ancestry, and, under God, to as- 



