Billy Budd: The problem of Billy’s innocence and guilt

Billy Budd: The problem of Billy’s innocence and guilt

Continued… from the previous

The court-martial found it difficult to understand why Claggart should have told a malicious lie about Billy when Billy himself admitted that there had been no malice between him and Claggart. Captain Vere, perceiving the court’s perplexity, and milted that Claggart’s behavior in bringing a false charge against Billy seemed to be mysterious, but he described it as a “mystery of iniquity”, using a scriptural phrase. Captain Vere also told the court that this mystery was for psychological theologians to discuss and that a military court had nothing to do with it. Captain Vere further said that the court martial was concerned only with the deed committed by the prisoner, namely Billy. Finding the court-martial in a state of troubled indecision, captain Vere pointed out that the members of the court-martial in a state of troubled hesitancy, which proceeded from the clash of military duty with moral scruple. He also said that the moral scruple of the court-martial seemed to be strengthened by a feeling of compassion. Captain Vere admitted that, like the members of the court-martial, he too was feeling much compassion for the accused man. But he then went on to say that they weren’t a jury of “casuists” or “moralists” but that they were to decide a case under the martial law. They might be feeling it difficult to sentence a fellow creature to death when that fellow-creature was innocent in the eyes of God; but they owed their allegiance not to nature but to the king. The ocean represented primeval Nature, and they no doubt moved on the ocean and had their being as sailors on the ocean; yet as the king’s officers it was their duty to obey the code imposed upon them by the king and not to obey their natural instincts and impulses. When their country declared war against another country, the king’s officers had no choice but to fight under the orders of the king or the king’s government; similarly, when they, as the king’s officers, had to decide the kind of case which was now before them, they had to enforce martial-law in the king’s name. If the law they had to enforce was too rigorous, they weren’t responsible. Their responsibility consisted in adverting to that law and administering it, no matter how pitilessly that law might operate in particular cases.