perhaps oblige him sometimes to repent of his fidelity.

It is the necessary consequence, sir, of a seaman's profession, that he
is often at a great distance from the place of his legal settlement, or
patrimonial possessions; and he may, therefore, assert of his own
circumstances what is most convenient, without danger of detection.
Distance is a security that prompts many men to falsehoods, by which
only vanity is gratified; and few men will tell truth in opposition to
their interest, when they may lie without apprehension of being
convicted.

When, therefore, a magistrate receives directions to impress all the
seamen within his district, how few will he find who will not declare
themselves freeholders in some distant county, or freemen of some
obscure borough. It is to no purpose, sir, that the magistrate
disbelieves what he cannot confute; and if in one instance in a hundred
he should be mistaken, and, acting in consequence of his errour, force a
freeman into the service, what reparation may not be demanded?

I, therefore, propose it to the consideration of the committee, whether
any man ought to claim exemption from this law by a title, that may so
readily be procured, or so safely usurped.

The ATTORNEY GENERAL spoke next:--Sir, the practice of impressing, which
has been declaimed against with such vehement exaggerations, is not only
founded on immemorial custom, which makes it part of the common law, but
is likewise established by our statutes; for I remember to have found it
in the statutes of queen Mary, and therefore cannot allow that it ought
to be treated as illegal, and anti-constitutional.

That it is not inconsistent with our constitution may be proved from the
practice of erecting the royal standard, upon great emergencies, to
which every man was obliged immediately to repair; this practice is as
old as our constitution, and as it may be revived at pleasure, may be
properly mentioned as equivalent to an impress.

Mr. VYNER answered:--This word, sir, which the learned member has by his
wonderful diligence discovered in the statutes, may perhaps be there,
but in a signification far different from that which it bears at
present. The word was, without doubt, originally French, _pret_, and
implied what is now expressed by the term _ready_; and to impress any
man was in those days only to make him _ready_, or engage him to hold
himself in _readiness_, which was brought about not by compulsion,
pursuit, a