“That your petitioners believe it will not be difficult to have such methods pointed out as will tend to supply the present necessities, and at the same time effectually promote the increase of seamen, when this honourable house shall think fit to inquire into a matter of such high importance to the naval power, trade, and riches of this kingdom.

“That your petitioners are convinced this bill will not only be ineffectual to answer the ends proposed by it, but will be destructive of the liberties of all his majesty’s subjects, as it empowers any parish officer, accompanied with an unlimited number of persons, at any hour, by day or by night, to force open the dwelling-houses, warehouses, or other places, provided for the security and defence of their lives and fortunes, contrary to the undoubted liberties of the people of Great Britain, and the laws of this land.

“In consideration, therefore, of the premises, and of the particular prejudices, hardships, and dangers, which must inevitably attend your petitioners, and all others the merchants and traders of this kingdom, should this bill pass into a law, your petitioners most humbly pray this honourable house, that they may be heard by their counsel against the said clauses in the said bill.”

Mr. BATHURST then presented a petition, and spoke as follows:—­Sir, the alarm which the bill, now depending, has raised, is not confined to the city of London, or to any particular province of the king’s dominions; the whole nation is thrown into commotions, and the effects of the law now proposed, are dreaded, far and wide, as a general calamity.  Every town which owes its trade and its provisions to navigation, apprehends the approach of poverty and scarcity, and those which are less immediately affected, consider the infraction of our liberties as a prelude to their destruction.  Happy would it be, if we, who are intrusted with their interest, could find any arguments to convince them that their terrour was merely panick.

That these fears have already extended their influence to the county which I represent, the petition which I now beg leave to lay before the house, will sufficiently evince; and I hope their remonstrances will prevail with this assembly to remove the cause of their disquiet, by rejecting the bill.

This was entitled “a petition of several gentlemen, freeholders, and other inhabitants of the county of Gloucester, in behalf of themselves, and all other, the freeholders of the said county,” setting forth, in substance, “That the petitioners being informed that a bill was depending in this house, for the encouragement and increase of seamen, and for the better and speedier manning his majesty’s fleet, containing several clauses which, should the bill pass into a law, would, as the petitioners apprehend, impose hardships upon the people too heavy to be borne, and create discontents in the minds of his majesty’s subjects; would subvert all the rights and privileges of a Briton; and overturn Magna Charta itself, the basis on which they are built; and, by these means, destroy that very liberty, for the preservation of which the present royal family was established upon the throne of Britain; for which reasons, such a law could never be obeyed, or much blood would be shed in consequence of it.”