The merchants, sir, do not come before us with loud remonstrances and harassing complaints, they do not apply to our passions, but our understandings, and offer such informations as will very much facilitate the publick service.  It has been frequent, in the course of this debate, to hear loud demands for better expedients, and more efficacious, than those which have been proposed; and is it to be conceived that those who called thus eagerly for new proposals, intended not to inform themselves, but to silence their opponents?

From whom, sir, are the best methods for the prosecution of naval affairs to be expected, but from those whose lives are spent in the study of commerce, whose fortunes depend upon the knowledge of the sea, and who will, most probably, exert their abilities in contriving expedients to promote the success of the war, than they whom the miscarriage of our fleets must irreparably ruin?

The merchants, sir, are enabled by their profession to inform us—­are deterred by their interest from deceiving us; they have, like all other subjects, a right to be heard on any question; and a better right than any other when their interest is more immediately affected; and, therefore, to refuse to hear them, will be, at once, impolitick and cruel; it will discover, at the same time, a contempt of the most valuable part of our fellow-subjects, and an inflexible adherence to our own opinions.

The expedient of asserting this to be a money bill, by which the just remonstrances of the merchants are intended to be eluded, is too trivial and gross to be adopted by this assembly:  if this bill can be termed a money bill, and no petitions are, therefore, to be admitted against it, I know not any bill relating to the general affairs of the nation which may not plead the same title to an exemption from petitions.

I therefore desire that the consideration of this clause may be deferred for two days, that the arguments of the merchants may be examined, and that this affair may not be determined without the clearest knowledge and exactest information.

Sir Robert WALPOLE spoke next, to this effect:—­Sir, the petition, whether justifiable or not, with regard to the occasion on which it is presented, or the language in which it is expressed, is certainly offered at an improper time, and, therefore, can lay no claim to the regard of this assembly.

The time prescribed, by the rules of this house, for the reception of petitions, is that at which the bill is first introduced, not at which it is to be finally determined.

The petition before us is said not to regard the bill in general, but a particular clause; and it is, therefore, asserted, that it may now properly be heard:  but this plea will immediately vanish, when it shall be made appear that the clause is not mentioned in it, and that there is no particular relation between that and the petition, which I shall attempt—­