{"id":"01KFNR89MB10182QEKFB837HSW","cid":"bafkreigbjxac5hg5vcwqogidukcrfj2dyujnpuliyztzmam3d3hcq4u57m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":15649,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.767Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 46","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":15586,"text":"that to go to the Duke’s benefit; we getting nothing at all for our\r\npains but our blisters?”\r\n\r\n“It is his.”\r\n\r\n“Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of\r\ngetting a livelihood?”\r\n\r\n“It is his.”\r\n\r\n“I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of\r\nthis whale.”\r\n\r\n“It is his.”\r\n\r\n“Won’t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?”\r\n\r\n“It is his.”\r\n\r\nIn a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of\r\nWellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular\r\nlights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be\r\ndeemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman\r\nof the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to\r\ntake the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To\r\nwhich my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)\r\nthat he had already done so, and received the money, and would be\r\nobliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend\r\ngentleman) would decline meddling with other people’s business. Is this\r\nthe still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three\r\nkingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars?\r\n\r\nIt will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke\r\nto the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs\r\ninquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested\r\nwith that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon\r\ngives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs\r\nto the King and Queen, “because of its superior excellence.” And by the\r\nsoundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such\r\nmatters.\r\n\r\nBut why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason\r\nfor that, ye lawyers!\r\n\r\nIn his treatise on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s Bench\r\nauthor, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: “Ye tail is ye Queen’s,\r\nthat ye Queen’s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this\r\nwas written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or\r\nRight whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this same bone is\r\nnot in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a\r\nsagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be\r\npresented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.\r\n\r\nThere are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers—the whale\r\nand the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and\r\nnominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue. I\r\nknow not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by\r\ninference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same\r\nway as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head\r\npeculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be\r\nhumorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there\r\nseems a reason in all things, even in law.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 46"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84AAHSNQ4BFJ0ASPHB53","peer_label":"76","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84AAHSNQ4BFJ0ASPHB53","peer_label":"76","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR89M6TEGR8NCXPAWF22KQ","peer_label":"Chunk 45","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:05.319Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:20.065Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}