ous
family, without being able to relieve them.

It is scarcely necessary, sir, to raise any more objections to a clause
in which nothing is right; but, to show how its imperfections multiply
upon the slightest consideration, I take the opportunity to observe,
that there is no provision made for regulating the voyages performed in
less time than a month, so that the greatest part of the abuses, which
have been represented as the occasion of this clause, are yet without
remedy, and only those sailors who venture far, and are exposed to the
greatest dangers, are restrained from receiving an adequate reward.

Thus much, sir, I have said upon the supposition that a regulation of
the sailors' wages is either necessary or just; a supposition of which I
am very far from discovering the truth. That it is just to oppress the
most useful of our fellow-subjects, to load those men with peculiar
hardships to whom we owe the plenty that we enjoy, the power that yet
remains in the nation, and which neither the folly nor the cowardice of
ministers have yet been able to destroy, and the security in which we
now sit and hold our consultations; that it is just to lessen our
payments at a time when we increase the labour of those who are hired,
and to expose men to danger without recompense, will not easily be
proved, even by those who are most accustomed to paradoxes, and are
ready to undertake the proof of any position which it is their interest
to find true.

Nor is it much more easy to show the necessity of this expedient in our
present state, in which it appears from the title of the bill, that our
chief endeavour should be the increase and encouragement of sailors,
and, I suppose, it has not often been discovered, that by taking away
the profits of a profession greater numbers have been allured to it.

The high wages, sir, paid by merchants are the chief incitements that
prevail upon the ambitious, the necessitous, or the avaricious, to
forsake the ease and security of the land, to leave easy trades, and
healthful employments, and expose themselves to an element where they
are not certain of an hour's safety. The service of the merchants is the
nursery in which seamen are trained up for his majesty's navies, and
from thence we must, in time of danger, expect those forces by which
alone we can be protected.

If, therefore, it is necessary to encourage sailors, it is necessary to
reject all measures that may terrify or disgust the