Renewal of The Mutiny Acts
Because the Bill of Rights prohibited the existence of a standing army during peacetime without the consent of Parliament, the each Mutiny Act was expressly limited to one year's duration. As a result, Parliament was asked annually to approve a new Mutiny Act for the coming year. The Articles of War, published by the crown, continued to govern military forces overseas.
A new Mutiny Act was passed each year until 1879. The Mutiny Act was soon modified to allow courts-martial for other crimes besides mutiny, sedition, and desertion. Modifications to the Mutiny Act soon allowed courts-martial trial of soldiers for acts prohibited by the Crown’s articles of war, as long as the articles conformed to the Mutiny Act in 1718. Civilians who were closely associated to the military, such as victuallers, could also be tried by courts-martial.
In 1807 all serving black soldiers recruited as slaves in the West India Regiments of the British Army were freed under that year's Mutiny Act.
Read more about this topic: Mutiny Acts
Famous quotes containing the words renewal of, renewal and/or acts:
“We sing the funeral, as goes the custom, with the hymn of the Dead. But Manuel, he chose a hymn for the living: the song of the coumbite, the song of the earth, of the water, the plants, of fellowship between peasants because he wanted, as I now understand it, that his death for you be the renewal of life.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“We sing the funeral, as goes the custom, with the hymn of the Dead. But Manuel, he chose a hymn for the living: the song of the coumbite, the song of the earth, of the water, the plants, of fellowship between peasants because he wanted, as I now understand it, that his death for you be the renewal of life.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)