,
which is the nursery and support of seamen at all times, and that spirit
of equipping private ships of war, which had been of distinguished
service to the nation, would be laid under such difficulties as might
cause a great stagnation in the former, and a total suppression of the
latter; the bill, therefore, would be highly prejudicial to the marine
of the kingdom, and altogether ineffectual for the purposes intended. A
great number of books and papers, relating to trading ships and vessels,
as well as to seamen and other persons protected or pressed into the
navy, and to expenses occasioned by pressing men into the navy, were
examined in a committee of the whole house, and the bill was improved
with many amendments: nay, after it was printed and engrossed, several
clauses were added by way of rider; yet still the experiment seemed
dangerous. The motion for its being past was violently opposed; warm
debates ensued; they were adjourned, and resumed; and the arguments
against the bill appeared at length in such a striking light, that,
when the question was put, the majority declared for the negative. The
regulations which had been made in parliament during the twenty-sixth,
the twenty-eighth, and thirtieth years of the present reign, for
the preservation of the public roads, being attended with some
inconveniencies in certain parts of the kingdom, petitions were
brought from some counties in Wales, as well as from the freeholders
of Hertfordshire, the farmers of Middlesex, and others, enumerating the
difficulties attending the use of broad wheels, in one case, and the
limitation of horses used in drawing carriages with narrow wheels,
in the other. The matter of these remonstrances was considered in a
committee of the whole house, which resolved, that the weight to be
carried by all waggons and carts, travelling on the turnpike roads,
should be limited. On this resolution a bill was framed, for amending
and reducing into one act of parliament the three acts before mentioned
for the preservation of the public highways; but some objections being
started, and a petition interposed by the land-holders of Suffolk and
Norfolk, alleging that the bill, if passed into a law, would render it
impossible to bring fresh provisions from those counties to London, as
the supply depended absolutely upon the quickness of conveyance, the
further consideration of it was postponed to a longer day, and never
resumed in the sequel: so that the