exposed to the same hardships by a power superiour 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 those cruelties are preparing,
have less sensibility than ourselves? 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 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 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 profession 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, therefore, 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 h