2. The method of ordering seamen in the royal fleet, and keeping up a regular discipline there, is directed by certain express rules, articles and orders, first enacted by the authority of parliament soon after the restoration[r]; but since new-modelled and altered, after the peace of Aix la Chapelle[], to remedy some defects which were of fatal consequence in conducting the preceding war. In these articles of the navy almost every possible offence is set down, and the punishment thereof annexed: in which respect the seamen have much the advantage over their brethren in the land service; whose articles of war are not enacted by parliament, but framed from time to time at the pleasure of the crown. Yet from whence this distinction arose, and why the executive power, which is limited so properly with regard to the navy, should be so extensive with regard to the army, it is hard to assign a reason: unless it proceeded from the perpetual establishment of the navy, which rendered a permanent law for their regulation expedient; and the temporary duration of the army, which subsisted only from year to year; and might therefore with less danger be subjected to discretionary government. But, whatever was apprehended at the first formation of the mutiny act, the regular renewal of our standing force at the entrance of every year has made this distinction idle. For, if from experience past we may judge of future events, the army is now lastingly ingrafted into the British constitution; with this singularly fortunate circumstance, that any branch of the legislature may annually put an end to it's legal existence, by refusing to concur in it's continuance.
[r] Stat. 13 Car. II. st. 1. c. 9.
[] Stat. 22 Geo. II. c. 23.
3. With regard to the privileges conferred on sailors, they are pretty much the same with those conferred on soldiers; with regard to relief, when maimed, or wounded, or superannuate, either by county rates, or the royal hospital at Greenwich; with regard also to the exercise of trades, and the power of making informal testaments: and, farther[t], no seaman aboard his majesty's ships can be arrested for any debt, unless the same be sworn to amount to at least twenty pounds; though, by the annual mutiny acts, a soldier may be arrested for a debt which extends to half that value, but not to a less amount.
[t] Stat. 1 Geo. II. st. 2. c. 14.
Chapter the fourteenth.
Of MASTER and SERVANT.
HAVING thus commented on the rights and duties of persons, as standing in the public relations of magistrates and people; the method I have marked out now leads me to consider their rights and duties in private oeconomical relations.
The three great relations in private life are, 1. That of master and servant; which is founded in convenience, whereby a man is directed to call in the assistance of others, where his own skill and labour will not be sufficient to answer the cares incumbent upon him. 2. That of husband and wife; which is founded in nature, but modified by civil society: the one directing man to continue and multiply his species, the other prescribing the manner in which that natural impulse must be confined and regulated. 3. That of parent and child, which is consequential to that of marriage, being it's principal end and design: and it is by virtue of this relation that infants are protected, maintained, and educated. But, since the parents, on whom this care is primarily incumbent, may be snatched away by death or otherwise, before they have completed their duty, the law has therefore provided a fourth relation; 4. That of guardian and ward, which is a kind of artificial parentage, in order to supply the deficiency, whenever it happens, of the natural. Of all these relations in their order.