his registry, being judged to be rather a badge of slavery, was
abolished by statute 9 Ann. c. 21.

[Footnote n: Stat. 2 Ann. c. 6.]

[Footnote o: Stat. 1 Geo. II. st. 2. c. 14.]

[Footnote p: Stat. 13 Geo. II. c. 3.]

[Footnote q: Stat. 7 & 8 W. III. c. 21.]

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[s], 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.

[Footnote r: Stat. 13 Car. II. st. 1. c. 9.]

[Footnote s: 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