e 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 seafaring life, but the hope of sudden
wealth, and some lucky season in which they may improve their fortunes
by a single effort. Is 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 recompense?

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 importance to dwell longer upon the
impropriety of this clause, which there is no possibility of putting in
execution. 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 very easily be 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 tyrannise
and compel is the low pleasure of petty capacities, of narrow minds,
swelled with the pride of