Admiral WAGER replied:--Sir, this clause, however contemptuously
treated, has been already passed into a law by a senate which brought no
dishonour upon the British nation, by a senate which was courted and
dreaded by the greatest part of the universe, and was drawn up by a
ministry that have given their posterity no reason to treat them with
derision and contumely.

In the reign of the late great queen, this method of proceeding was
approved and established, and we may judge of the propriety of the
measures followed in that war by the success which they procured.

Those, therefore, by whom this bill was drawn up have committed no new
absurdities, nor have proposed any thing which was not enacted by the
wisest of our predecessors, in one of the most illustrious periods of
our history.

Mr. GYBBON answered:--Sir, I am far from thinking a proposition
sufficiently defended by an assertion that it was admitted by our
predecessors; for though I have no inclination to vilify their memory, I
may without scruple affirm, that they had no pretensions to
infallibility, and that there are in many of our statutes instances of
such ignorance, credulity, weakness, and errour, as cannot be considered
without astonishment.

In questions of an abstruse and complicated nature, it is certain, sir,
that experience has taught us what could never have been discovered
previously by the wisdom of our ancestors; and we have found, by their
consequences, the impropriety of many practices which they approved, and
which we should have equally applauded in the same circumstances.

But to what purpose is observation, if we must shut our eyes against it,
and appeal for ever to the wisdom of our ancestors?--if we must fall
into errour, merely because they were mistaken, and rush upon rocks out
of veneration to those who were wrecked against them.

In questions easily to be examined, and determinations which comprised
no perplexing contrarieties of interest, or multiplicity of
circumstances, they were equally liable with ourselves to be supine and
negligent, to sink into security, or be surprised by haste. That the
clause now before us was enacted by them, must be ascribed merely to the
hurry of the session in which it was brought before them; a time in
which so many inquiries of the highest importance were to be made, and
great diversity of views to be regarded, that it is no wonder that some
absurdities should escape without detection.

In th