manity. All these assertions will need to be proved only by a bare perusal of this hateful bill; by which the meanest, the most worthless reptile, exalted to a petty office, by serving a wretch only superior to him in fortune, is enabled to flush his authority, by tyrannising over those who every hour deserve the public acknowledgements of the community; to intrude upon the retreats of brave men, fatigued and exhausted by honest industry; to drag them out with all the wantonness of groveling authority, and chain them to the oar, without a moment's respite; or perhaps oblige them to purchase, with the gains of a dangerous voyage, or the plunder of an enemy lately conquered, a short interval to settle their affairs, or bid their children farewell. Let any gentleman in this house, let those, sir, who now sit at ease, projecting laws of oppression, and conferring upon their own slaves such licentious authority, pause a few moments, and imagine themselves exposed to the same hardships, by a power superior to their own;—let them conceive themselves torn from the tenderness and caresses of their families, by midnight irruptions, dragged in triumph through the streets, by a despicable officer, and placed under the command of those by whom they have, perhaps, been already oppressed and insulted. Why should we imagine that the race of men for whom these cruelties are preparing, have less sensibility than our selves? Why should we believe that they will suffer without complaint, and be injured without resentment? Why should we conceive that they will not at once deliver themselves, and punish their oppressors, by deserting that country where they are considered as felons, and laying hold on those rewards and privileges which no other government will deny them? This is, indeed, the only tendency, whatever may have been the intention of the bill now before us; for I know not whether the most refined sagacity can discover any other method of discouraging navigation, than those which are drawn together in the bill now before us. We first give our constables an authority to hunt the sailors, like thieves, and drive them, by incessant pursuit, out of the nation; but, lest any man should, by friendship, good fortune, or the power of money, find means of staying behind, we have, with equal wisdom, condemned him to poverty

and misery; and, lest the natural courage of his profes sion should incite him to assist his country in the war, have contrived a method of precluding him from any advantage that he might have the weakness to hope from his fortitude and diligence. What more can be done, unless we at once prohibit to seamen the use of the common elements, or doom them to a general proscription?

It is just that advantage, sir, should be proportioned to the hazard by which it is to be obtained; and there. fore a sailor has an honest claim to an advance of wages in time of war: it is necessary to excite expectation, and to fire ambition, by the prospect of great acquisitions ; and by this prospect it is that such numbers are daily allured to naval business, and that our privateers are filled with adventurers. The large wages which war makes necessary, are more powerful incentives to those whom impatience of poverty determines to change their state of life, than the secure gains of peaceful commerce; for the danger is overlooked by a mind intent upon the profit. War is the harvest of a sailor, in which he is to store provisions for the winter of old-age; and, if we blast this hope, he will inevitably sink into indolence and cowardice. Many of the sailors are bred up to trades, or capable of any laborious employment upon land; nor is there any reason for which they expose themselves to the dangers of a sea-faring life, but the Hope of sudden wealth, and some lucky scason, in which they may improve their fortunes by a single effort. it reasonable to believe, that all these will not rather have recourse to their former callings, and live in security, though not in plenty, than encounter danger and poverty at once, and face an enemy, without any prospect of recompence?

Is

Let any man recollect the ideas that arose in his mind upon hearing of a bill for encouraging and increasing sailors, and examine whether he had any expectation of expedients like these. I suppose it was never known before that men were to be encouraged by subjecting them to peculiar penalties, or that to take away the gains of a profession, was a method of recommending it more generally to the people. But it is not of very great im portance to dwell longer upon the impropriety of this clause, which there is no possibility of putting in execu

tion. That the merchants will try every method of eluding a law so prejudicial to their interest, may be easily imagined; and a mind not very fruitful of evasions, will discover that this law may be eluded by a thousand artifices. If the merchants are restrained from allowing men their wages beyond a certain sum, they will make contracts for the voyage, of which the time may be very casily computed: they may offer a reward for expedition and fidelity; they may pay a large sum by way of advance; they may allow the sailors part of the profits, or may offer money by a third hand. To fix the price of any commodity, of which the quantity and the use may vary their proportions, is the most excessive degree of ignorance. No man can determine the price of corn, unless he can regulate the harvest, and keep the number of the people for ever at a stand.

But let us suppose these methods as efficacious as their most sanguine vindicators are desirous of representing them, it does not yet appear that they are necessary; and, to inflict hardships without necessity, is by no means the practice of either wisdom or benevolence. To tyBannise and compel, is the low pleasure of petty capacities; of narrow minds, swelled with the pride of uncontroulable authority; the wantonness of wretches who are insensible of the consequences of their own actions, and of whom candour may perhaps determine, that they are only cruel because they are stupid. Let us not exalt into a precedent the most unjust and rigorons law of our predecessors, of which they themselves declared their repentance, or confessed the inefficacy, by never reviving it; let us rather endeavour to gain the sailors by lenity and moderation, and reconcile them to 'the service of the crown by real encouragments; for it is rational to imagine, that in proportion as men are disgusted by injuries, they will be won by kindness. There is one expedient, sir, which deserves to be tried ; and from which, at least, more success may be hoped, than from cruelty, hunger, and persecution. The ships that are now to be fitted out for the service, are those of the first magnitude, which it is usual to bring back into the ports in winter. Let us, therefore, promise to all seamen that shall voluntarily engage in them, besides the reward already proposed, a discharge from the ser

vice at the end of six or seven months. By this they will be released from their present dread of perpetual slavery; and be certain, as they are when in the service of the merchants, of a respite from their fatigues. The trade of the nation will be only interrupted for a time, and may be carried on in the winter months; and large sums will be saved by dismissing the seamen when they cannot be employed. By adding this to the other methods of encouragement, and throwing aside all rigorous and op. pressive schemes, the navy may easily be manned, our country protected, our commerce re-established, and our enemies subdued;-but to pass the bill as it now stands, is to determine that trade shall cease, and that no ship shall sail out of the river.

LXI. Mr. (late lord chancellor) Erskine, against Mr. Pitt, on the dissolution of parliament.

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I HAVE ventured to consider ourselves as re-assembled· this day, after the necessary adjournment of the season, under his majesty's solemn promise, that we should not be interrupted in our deliberations on the affairs of the East-Indies, and the support of the public credit, by any prorogation or dissolution of the parliament: for if his majesty's answer to our late address means any thing short of that, his ministers who have advised and perused it, have not only abused his royal confidence, but grossly deceived and insulted this house. For the answer, in acknowledging the urgency of those objects mentioned in the address, as reasons against dissolving, and likewise the expediency of proceeding on them with vigilance, most undoubtedly conveys, that the house will be permitted not merely to meet, but to meet for the furtherance of those objects. On the day the auswer was read in this house, there were no responsible ministers present; but as they are here now, the house is intitled to know, in the most explicit and unequivocal terms, previous to the discussion of any question of India, whether they are to understand, that they are met again freely, independently, and with ultimate effect to delibe

rate on the affairs of India, and the other great considerations that press upon them; or, whether they are only tenants, at the will of the new minister, to be sent back to their constituents as delinquents, unless they shall recede from every principle of constitutional policy, to which they are solemnly and publicly pledged, and shall agree to register any edict upon the subject which the new treasury-bench may dictate to them, however repugnant to their former opinions. For, if that should be their system, I, for one, would not give up a moment of my time to deliberation which must be fruitless, and which could end in the final execution of no permanent system of government in Asia or Europe: if ministers meet us only, by way of experiment, to try our opinions with the rod of dissolution hanging over our heads, as the scourge of disobedience, determined, instead of retiring on a disappointment, still to distract and disturb a government which they cannot guide, and to gain over a future parliament by the arts of cabal and corruption, which the virtue of the present has resisted, it will become us to know, not from the minister, but from the throne itself, whether this country is to be governed by men whom the house of commons can confide in, or whe ther we, the people of England's representatives, are to be the sport and foot-ball of any junto that may hope to rule over us, by an unseen and unexplorable principle of government, utterly unknown to the constitution. This is the great question, to which every public-spirited citizen of this country should direct his view-a question which goes very wide of the policy to be adopted concerning India, about which very wise and very honest men, not only might, but have and did materially differ. The total removal of all the executive servants of the crown, while they are in the full enjoyment of the con fidence of that house, and, indeed, without any other visible or avowed cause of removal, than because they do enjoy that confidence, and the appointment of others in their room, without any other apparent ground of selection than because they enjoyed it not, is, in my mind, a most alarming and portentous attack on the public freedom; because, though no outward form of the govern ment is relaxed or violated by it, so as instantly to supply the constitutional remedy of opposition, the whole