Chapter 72 - Page 2

statutes.

Still more. This violation of the law, on the part of the
officers, in many cases involves oppression to the sailor. But
throughout the whole naval code, which so hems in the mariner by
law upon law, and which invests the Captain with so much judicial
and administrative authority over him--in most cases entirely
discretionary--not one solitary clause is to be found which in
any way provides means for a seaman deeming himself aggrieved to
obtain redress. Indeed, both the written and unwritten laws of
the American Navy are as destitute of individual guarantees to
the mass of seamen as the Statute Book of the despotic Empire
of Russia.

Who put this great gulf between the American Captain and the
American sailor? Or is the Captain a creature of like passions
with ourselves? Or is he an infallible archangel, incapable of
the shadow of error? Or has a sailor no mark of humanity, no
attribute of manhood, that, bound hand and foot, he is cast into
an American frigate shorn of all rights and defences, while the
notorious lawlessness of the Commander has passed into a proverb,
familiar to man-of-war's-men, _the law was not made for the
Captain!_ Indeed, he may almost be said to put off the citizen
when he touches his quarter-deck; and, almost exempt from the law
of the land himself, he comes down upon others with a judicial
severity unknown on the national soil. With the Articles of War
in one hand, and the cat-o'-nine-tails in the other, he stands an
undignified parody upon Mohammed enforcing Moslemism with the
sword and the Koran.

The concluding sections of the Articles of War treat of the naval
courts-martial before which officers are tried for serious
offences as well as the seamen. The oath administered to members
of these courts--which sometimes sit upon matters of life and
death--explicitly enjoins that the members shall not "at any time
divulge the vote or opinion of any particular member of the
court, unless required so to do before a court of justice in due
course of law."

Here, then, is a Council of Ten and a Star Chamber indeed!
Remember, also, that though the sailor is sometimes tried for his
life before a tribunal like this, in no case do his fellow-
sailors, his peers, form part of the court. Yet that a man should
be tried by his peers is the fundamental principle of all
civilised jurisprudence. And not only tried by his peers, but his
peers must be unanimous to render a verdict; whereas, in a court-
martial, the concurrence of a majority of conventional and social
superiors is all that is requisite.

In the English Navy, it is said, they had a law which authorised
the sailor to appeal, if he chose, from the decision of the