lors
lose the reward of their hazards and their labours, only because they
have been successful? What will this be less than making their bravery a
crime or folly, and punishing them for not protracting the war by
cowardice or treachery?

But let us suppose, sir, those defects supplied by a more explicit and
determinate specification; there will yet arise an objection far more
formidable; an objection, which the present state of our revenues will
not suffer to be answered. The consideration of the greatness of the
annual payment which this proposal requires, ought to incite every man
to employ all his sagacity in search of some other method, equally
efficacious, and less expensive.

We have already, sir, forty thousand seamen in our pay, to whom eight
thousand more are speedily to be added: when each of these shall demand
his stipend, a new burden of two hundred and eighty-eight thousand
pounds must be laid upon the nation; upon a nation, whose lands are
mortgaged, whose revenues are anticipated, and whose taxes cannot be
borne without murmurs, nor increased without sedition.

The nation has found, by experience, that taxes once imposed for just
reasons, and continued upon plausible pretences, till they are become
familiar, are afterwards continued upon motives less laudable, are too
productive of influence, and too instrumental towards facilitating the
measures of the ministry, to be ever willingly remitted.

Mr. BLADEN spoke next, as follows:--Sir, it is obvious, that when the
balance is unequal, it may be reduced to an equilibrium, as well by
taking weight out of one scale, as adding it to the other. The wages
offered by the merchants overbalance, at present, those which are
proposed by the crown; to raise the allowance in the ships of war, will
be, to lay new loads upon the publick, and will incommode the merchants,
whose wages must always bear the same proportion to the king's. The only
method, then, that remains, is to lighten the opposite scale, by
restraining the merchants from giving wages, in time of war, beyond a
certain value; for, as the service of the crown is then more immediately
necessarv to the general advantage than that of the merchants, it ought
to be made more gainful. Sailors, sir, are not, generally, men of very
extensive views; and, therefore, we cannot expect that they should
prefer the general good of their country before their own present
interest; a motive of such power, that even in men