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294 THE NAVAL MUTINIES OF 179T
fasting, keel-hauling and tongue-scraping were still
practised. But before the time of the Mutinies the
customs had changed. In 1778 the Articles of War were
revised : the number of capital offences was reduced, and
courts-martial were in many cases allowed to substitute
milder punishments for those prescribed in the statute. 1
The amended Articles of War remained in force in 1797,
and there was at that time no great disparity between the
system of naval discipline and the administration of
criminal law on land. In fact there is good reason for
believing that, if the Mutinies had never occurred or had
been immediately suppressed, the humanitarian movement
that was influencing legal customs on shore would
still have produced a change in the demeanour of naval
officers towards the seamen. If there was any justification
for the complaints of slackness made a generation later
by Cunningham and Brenton, the slackness was probably
due rather to an excess of humanitarian feeling than to
the fear of another mutiny.
And it is noticeable that the mutineers did not find
serious fault with the system of discipline, but with
individual officers who had abused their authority.
The
real grievance was their subjection, not to oppressive law,
but to tyrannical men. It is true that the Nore mutineers
demanded a revision of the Articles of War. But the
demand certainly was not unanimous. There must have
been in the Nore fleet many sober and reliable men who
seldom transgressed the regulations of the navy. Any
relaxation of discipline would be entirely to the disadvantage
of such men, for it would set a premium on
indolence and disorder. Moreover, the delegates of the
Nore fleet showed their approval of stern measures of
correction by floggings and duckings of their own
authority. And it will be remembered that they even
claimed, though they did not exercise, the power of life
and death over their fellow-seamen. It cannot be said,
1. Robinson, p. 176.