Nor will this bill, sir, only give the seamen new reasons of disgust, but it will tend, likewise, to aggravate those grievances, which already have produced a detestation of the publick service, scarcely to be conquered.

The officers of the navy, sir, will hardly be made less insolent by an increase of power; they whose tyranny has already alienated their fellow-subjects from the king’s service, though they could only depend upon the character of probity and moderation for the prospect of manning their ships in succeeding expeditions, will probably, when they are animated by a law like this, and made absolute both by land and sea, indulge themselves in the enjoyment of their new authority, contrive new hardships and oppressions, and tyrannise without fear and without mercy.  Thus, sir, will the bill not only be tyrannical in itself, but the parent of tyranny; it will give security to the cruel, and confidence to the arrogant.

That any man, at least any man bred from his infancy to change his residence, and accustomed to different climates and to foreign nations, will fix by choice in that country where he finds the worst reception, is hardly to be imagined.  We see indeed, that men unqualified to support themselves in other countries, or who have, by long custom, contracted a fondness for particular methods of life, will bear very uncomfortable circumstances, without endeavouring to improve their conditions by a change of their habitations.  But the temper of a sailor, acquainted with all parts, and indifferent to all, is of another kind.  Such, sir, is his love of change, arising either from wantonness, or curiosity, that he is hard to be retained by the kindest treatment and most liberal rewards; and will, therefore, never struggle with his habitual dispositions, only to continue in a state of slavery.

I think it, therefore, sir, very evident that this new method of encouraging sailors will be so far from increasing them, that it may probably drive them out of the empire, and at once ruin our trade and our navy; at once beggar and disarm us.

Let me now suppose, sir, for a moment, the bill less pernicious in its consequences, and consider only the difficulties of executing it.  Every seafaring man is to be seized, at pleasure, by the magistrate; but what definition is given of a seafaring man?  Or by what characteristick is the magistrate to distinguish him?  I have never been able to discover any peculiarities in the form of a seaman that mark him out from the rest of the species.  There is, indeed, less servility in his air, and less effeminacy in his face, than in those that are commonly to be seen in drawing-rooms, in brothels, and at reviews; but I know not that a seaman can be distinguished from any other man of equal industry or use, who has never enervated himself by vice, nor polished himself into corruption.  So that this bill, sir, if it shall pass into a law, will put it at once in the power of the magistrate to dispose of seamen at his pleasure, and to term whom he pleases a seaman.