rs. 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
Articles of War, and especially by Article I., an American Captain may,
and frequently does, inflict a severe and degrading punishment upon a
sailor, while he himself is for ever removed from the possibility of
undergoing the like disgrace; and, in all probability, from undergoing
any punishment whatever, even if guilty of the same thing--contention
with his equals, for instance--for which he punishes another. Yet both
sailor and captain are American citizens.

Now, in the language of Blackstone, again, there is a law, "coeval with
mankind, dictated by God himself, superior in obligation to any other,
and no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this." That law is
the Law of Nature; among the three great principles of which Justinian
includes "that to every man should be rendered his due." But we have
seen that the laws involving flogging in the Navy do _not_ render to
every man his due, since in some cases they indirectly exclude the
officers from any punishment whatever, and in all cases protect them
from the scourge, which is inflicted upon the sailor. Therefore,
according to Blackstone and Justinian, those laws have no binding
force; and every American man-of-war's-man would be morally justified
in resisting the scourge to the uttermost; and, in so resisting, would
be religiously justified in what would be judicially styled "the act of
mutiny" itself.

If, then, these scourging laws be for any reason neces