Of Captain Mission and His Crew | Page 2

the cowardly Whelps have not the Courage otherwise
to defend what they get by their Knavery; but damn ye altogether:
Damn them for a Pack of crafty Rascals, and you, who serve them, for
a Parcel of hen-hearted Numskuls. They villify us, the Scoundrels do,
when there is only this Difference, they rob the Poor under the Cover of
Law, forsooth, and we plunder the Rich under the Protection of our
own Courage._[3]
Bellamy asks the crew of the captured ship to abandon the slavery of
working for low wages under severe captains for the complete
economic and political equality of life on a pirate ship.
Government on Captain Misson's ship, the Victoire, and in the colony
of Libertalia is partially an idealization of the pirate's creed. But two
other elements which must be considered are, first, the concept of
government in the state of nature, and secondly, the ideal of the
socialist utopia. Most political theorists of Defoe's time postulated a
state of nature in which man lived either entirely free from government
or under loose patriarchal control, from which he was removed either
by the invention of money, the discovery of agriculture or by some
crime. To a certain extent, Misson's pirate government may be regarded
as a stage in the evolution of government. In The Farther Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, Defoe showed how government evolved from the
anarchy of the state of nature. Both Crusoe's colony and Libertalia are
eventually forced to establish government, private property and
criminal laws, but Libertalia, which retains its egalitarian and
democratic character, is overthrown by its failure to account for human
evil and crime.
A second influence on Captain Misson's ideology is Plutarch's
description of the laws of Sparta and Rome. Even during the "Anti-
Communist Period" which followed the Glorious Revolution, the well-
regulated state of the Lacedemonians remained the norm for Utopias.
The influence of Plutarch pervades the biographies in the _General
History of the Pyrates._ Lycurgus' laws echo throughout Misson's
attacks on luxury and the unequal distribution of wealth, while
Plutarch's study of Spartacus, which is mentioned in Defoe's preface,

may well have been the model for his hero.
But neither the desire to regain the purity of the state of nature nor an
admiration for Spartan simplicity entirely explain Misson's vigorous
demand for freedom and his attacks on the corruption of the ruling
class. By refusing to fly the pirate flag, Misson dramatizes the growing
revolt of the poor against a useless nobility. The crew of the Victoire
are, prophetically enough, French. Their aspiration is for a society
following the precepts of _la carrière ouverte aux talents_; their revolt
is that of a few courageous men unafraid to engage in the pirate's "war
against mankind" while those of lesser courage "dance to the Musick of
their Chains."
Defoe's study of Misson is different from the Utopias of More, Bacon
or Campanella in so far as there is no discovery of an ideal civilization.
Libertalia is a Utopia which reflects a direct reaction to the abuses of
the time--abuses of economic, political and religious freedom.
Anticipating Beccaria's criticism of the death penalty by almost forty
years, Carracioli argues that since man's right to life is inalienable, no
government can have the power of capital punishment.[4] Misson's
belief in equality is extended to include the negro slaves the Victoire
takes at sea as well as the natives of Madagascar. After asking the
negroes to join his crew, Misson tells his men that
the Trading for those of our own Species, could never be agreeable to
the Eyes of divine Justice: That no Man had Power of the Liberty of
another; and while those who profess'd a more enlightened Knowledge
of the Deity, sold men like Beasts; they prov'd that their Religion was
no more than Crimace...: For his Part he hop'd, he spoke the Sentiments
of all his brave Companions, he had not exempted his Neck from the
galling Yoak of Slavery, and asserted his own Liberty to enslave
others.
Slavery is banished from Misson's ship, and the negroes are schooled in
the principles of freedom.
Perhaps the most difficult problem in discussing the principles of
Misson and Carracioli is to attempt an explanation of why Defoe, a
Presbyterian, should have made his protagonists into deists. Defoe
attacks Carracioli's deistic arguments through his narrator, Captain
Johnson, who remarks that such ideas are pernicious only to "weak
Men who cannot discover their Fallacy." But since similar ideas appear

in Robert _Drury's Journal_ published a year later, it may be assumed
that the arguments of the deists held a certain fascination for Defoe at
this time. Carracioli's deism also has a dramatic function in the story.
That on a voyage to Rome a young man like Misson should be
converted to deism by