Note 4 — Chapter LXXI · THE GENEALOGY OF THE ARTICLES OF WAR.

The first Naval Articles of War in the English language were passed in the thirteenth year of the reign of Charles the Second, under the title of “An act for establishing Articles and Orders for the regulating and better Government of his Majesty’s Navies, Ships-of-War, and Forces by Sea.” This act was repealed, and, so far as concerned the officers, a modification of it substituted, in the twenty-second year of the reign of George the Second, shortly after the Peace of Aix la Chapelle, just one century ago. This last act, it is believed, comprises, in substance, the Articles of War at this day in force in the British Navy. It is not a little curious, nor without meaning, that neither of these acts explicitly empowers an officer to inflict the lash. It would almost seem as if, in this case, the British lawgivers were willing to leave such a stigma out of an organic statute, and bestow the power of the lash in some less solemn, and perhaps less public manner. Indeed, the only broad enactments directly sanctioning naval scourging at sea are to be found in the United States Statute Book and in the “Sea Laws” of the absolute monarch, Louis le Grand, of France.[5] Taking for their basis the above-mentioned British Naval Code, and ingrafting upon it the positive scourging laws, which Britain was loth to recognise as organic statutes, our American lawgivers, in the year 1800, framed the Articles of War now governing the American Navy. They may be found in the second volume of the “United States Statutes at Large,” under chapter xxxiii.—“An act for the better government of the Navy of the United States.”