Chapter 35 - Page 2

broad principles of political liberty and equality.
Whereas, it would hardly affect one iota the condition on
shipboard of an American man-of-war's-man, were he transferred to
the Russian navy and made a subject of the Czar.

As a sailor, he shares none of our civil immunities; the law of
our soil in no respect accompanies the national floating timbers
grown thereon, and to which he clings as his home. For him our
Revolution was in vain; to him our Declaration of Independence is
a lie.

It is not sufficiently borne in mind, perhaps, that though the
naval code comes under the head of the martial law, yet, in time
of peace, and in the thousand questions arising between man and
man on board ship, this code, to a certain extent, may not
improperly be deemed municipal. With its crew of 800 or 1,000
men, a three-decker is a city on the sea. But in most of these
matters between man and man, the Captain instead of being a
magistrate, dispensing what the law promulgates, is an absolute
ruler, making and unmaking law as he pleases.

It will be seen that the XXth of the Articles of War provides,
that if any person in the Navy negligently perform the duties
assigned him, he shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial
shall adjudge; but if the offender be a private (common sailor)
he may, at the discretion of the Captain, be put in irons or
flogged. It is needless to say, that in cases where an officer
commits a trivial violation of this law, a court-martial is
seldom or never called to sit upon his trial; but in the sailor's
case, he is at once condemned to the lash. Thus, one set of sea-
citizens is exempted from a law that is hung in terror over
others. What would landsmen think, were the State of New York to
pass a law against some offence, affixing a fine as a penalty,
and then add to that law a section restricting its penal
operation to mechanics and day laborers, exempting all gentlemen
with an income of one thousand dollars? Yet thus, in the spirit
of its practical operation, even thus, stands a good part of the
naval laws wherein naval flogging is involved.

But a law should be "universal," and include in its possible
penal operations the very judge himself who gives decisions upon
it; nay, the very judge who expounds it. Had Sir William
Blackstone violated the laws of England, he would have been
brought before the bar over which he had presided, and would
there have been tried, with the counsel for the crown reading to
him, perhaps, from a copy of his own _Commentaries_. And should
he have been found guilty, he would have suffered like the
meanest subject, "according to law."

How is it in an American frigate? Let one example suffice. By the