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 them; and as their numbers must depend upon our trade, let us not embarrass the merchants with any other difficulties than those which are inseparable from war, and which very little care has been hitherto taken to alleviate.

Mr. HAY replied:—­Sir, the objections which have been urged with so much ardour, and displayed with such power of eloquence, are not, in my opinion, formidable enough to discourage us from prosecuting our measures; some of them may be, perhaps, readily answered, and the rest easily removed.

The computation of time, as it now stands, is allowed not to produce any formidable evil, and therefore did not require so rhetorical a censure:  the inconveniency of calendar months may easily be removed by a little candour in the contracting parties, or, that the objection may not be repeated to the interruption of the debate, weeks or days may be substituted, and the usual reckoning of the sailors be still continued.

That some contracts may be annulled, and inconveniencies or delays of payment arise, is too evident to be questioned; but in that case the sailor may have his remedy provided, and be enabled to obtain, by an easy process, what he shall be judged to have deserved; for it must be allowed reasonable, that every man who labours in honest and useful employments, should receive the reward of his diligence and fidelity.