sks the
intrepid Apostle, well knowing, as a Roman citizen, that it was not.
And now, eighteen hundred years after, is it lawful for you, my
countrymen, to scourge a man that is an American? to scourge him round
the world in your frigates?

It is to no purpose that you apologetically appeal to the general
depravity of the man-of-war's-man. Depravity in the oppressed is no
apology for the oppressor; but rather an additional stigma to him, as
being, in a large degree, the effect, and not the cause and
justification of oppression.

CHAPTER XXXV.

FLOGGING NOT LAWFUL.

It is next to idle, at the present day, merely to denounce an iniquity.
Be ours, then, a different task.

If there are any three things opposed to the genius of the American
Constitution, they are these: irresponsibility in a judge, unlimited
discretionary authority in an executive, and the union of an
irresponsible judge and an unlimited executive in one person.

Yet by virtue of an enactment of Congress, all the Commodores in the
American navy are obnoxious to these three charges, so far as concerns
the punishment of the sailor for alleged misdemeanors not particularly
set forth in the Articles of War.

Here is the enactment in question.

XXXII. _Of the Articles of War_.--"All crimes committed by persons
belonging to the Navy, which are not specified in the foregoing
articles, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such
cases at sea."

This is the article that, above all others, puts the scourge into the
hands of the Captain, calls him to no account for its exercise, and
furnishes him with an ample warrant for inflictions of cruelty upon the
common sailor, hardly credible to landsmen.

By this article the Captain is made a legislator, as well as a judge
and an executive. So far as it goes, it absolutely leaves to his
discretion to decide what things shall be considered crimes, and what
shall be the penalty; whether an accused person has been guilty of
actions by him declared to be crimes; and how, when, and where the
penalty shall be inflicted.

In the American Navy there is an everlasting suspension of the Habeas
Corpus. Upon the bare allegation of misconduct there is no law to
restrain the Captain from imprisoning a seaman, and keeping him
confined at his pleasure. While I was in the Neversink, the Captain of
an American sloop of war, from undoubted motives of personal pique,
kept a seaman confined in the brig for u