Chapter 72

"HEREIN ARE THE GOOD ORDINANCES OF THE SEA, WHICH WISE MEN, WHO
VOYAGED ROUND THE WORLD, GAVE TO OUR ANCESTORS, AND WHICH CONSTITUTE
THE BOOKS OF THE SCIENCE OF GOOD CUSTOMS."
--The Consulate of the Sea.

The present usages of the American Navy are such that, though there
is no government enactment to that effect, yet, in many respect, its
Commanders seem virtually invested with the power to observe or
violate, as seems to them fit, several of the Articles of War.

According to Article XV., "_No person in the Navy shall quarrel
with any other person in the Navy, nor use provoking or
reproachful words, gestures, or menaces, on pain of such
punishment as a court-martial shall adjudge_."

"_Provoking or reproachful words!_" Officers of the Navy, answer
me! Have you not, many of you, a thousand times violated this
law, and addressed to men, whose tongues were tied by this very
Article, language which no landsman would ever hearken to without
flying at the throat of his insulter? I know that worse words
than _you_ ever used are to be heard addressed by a merchant-
captain to his crew; but the merchant-captain does not live under
this XVth Article of War.

Not to make an example of him, nor to gratify any personal
feeling, but to furnish one certain illustration of what is here
asserted, I honestly declare that Captain Claret, of the
Neversink, repeatedly violated this law in his own proper person.

According to Article III., no officer, or other person in the
Navy, shall be guilty of "oppression, fraud, profane swearing,
drunkenness, or any other scandalous conduct."

Again let me ask you, officers of the Navy, whether many of you
have not repeatedly, and in more than one particular, violated
this law? And here, again, as a certain illustration, I must once
more cite Captain Claret as an offender, especially in the matter
of profane swearing. I must also cite four of the lieutenants,
some eight of the midshipmen, and nearly all the seamen.

Additional Articles might be quoted that are habitually violated
by the officers, while nearly all those _exclusively_ referring
to the sailors are unscrupulously enforced. Yet those Articles,
by which the sailor is scourged at the gangway, are not one whit
more laws than those _other_ Articles, binding upon the officers,
that have become obsolete from immemorial disuse; while still
other Articles, to which the sailors alone are obnoxious, are
observed or violated at the caprice of the Captain. Now, if it be
not so much the severity as the certainty of punishment that
deters from transgression, how fatal to all proper reverence for
the enactments of Congress must be this disregard of its