That this trade is very important appears from the number of ships which it employs, and which, without lading, must rot in the harbours, if rice be not excepted from the general prohibition.  Without this exception, sir, it is not easy to say what numbers, whose stations appear very different, and whose employments have no visible relation to each other, will be at once involved in calamity, reduced to sudden distress, and obliged to seek new methods of supporting their families.  The sailor, the merchant, the shipwright, the manufacturer, with all the subordinations of employment that depend upon them, all that supply them with materials, or receive advantage from their labours, almost all the subjects of the British crown, must suffer, at least, in some degree, by the ruin of Carolina.

Nor ought the danger of the sugar islands, and other provinces, less to alarm our apprehensions, excite our compassion, or employ our consideration, since nothing is more evident than that by passing this bill without the exceptions which their petitions propose, we shall reduce one part of our colonies to the want of bread, and confine the other to live on nothing else; for they subsist by the exchange of those products to which the soil of each country is peculiarly adapted:  one province affords no corn, and the other supplies its inhabitants with corn only.

The necessity of expediting this bill, however it has been exaggerated, is not so urgent but that we may be allowed time sufficient to consider for what purpose it is to be passed, and to recollect that nothing is designed by it, but to hinder our enemies from being supplied from the British dominions with provisions, by which they might be enabled more powerfully to carry on the war against us.

To this design no objection has been made, but it is well known, that a good end may be defeated by an absurd choice of means, and I am not able to discover how we shall increase our own strength, or diminish that of our enemies, by compelling one part of our fellow-subjects to starve the other.

It is necessary, sir, to prohibit the exportation of corn to the ports of our enemies, and of those nations by which our enemies will be supplied, but surely it is of no use to exclude any part of our own dominions from the privilege of being supplied from another.  Nor can any argument be alleged in defence of such a law, that will not prove with equal force, that corn ought to remain in the same granaries where it is now laid, that all the markets in this kingdom should be suspended, and that no man should be allowed to sell bread to another.

There is, indeed, sir, a possibility that the liberty for which I contend, may be used to wicked purposes, and that some men may be incited by poverty or avarice to carry the enemy those provisions, which they pretend to export to British provinces.  But if we are to refuse every power that may be employed to bad purposes, we must lay all mankind in dungeons, and divest human nature of all its rights; for every man that has the power of action, may sometimes act ill.