8. No ship that is permitted to enter at the Custom House and take in goods should ever be refused men, or delayed in the delivering them above five days after a demand made and a ticket from the Custom House delivered (general cases, as arrests and embargoes, excepted).
The Consequences of this Method.
1. By this means the public would have no want of seamen, and all the charges and other inconveniences of pressing men would be prevented.
2. The intolerable oppression upon trade, from the exorbitance of wages and insolence of mariners, would be taken off.
3. The following sums of money should be paid to the office, to lie in bank as a public fund for the service of the nation, to be disposed of by order of Parliament, and not otherwise; a committee being a ways substituted in the intervals of the session to audit the accounts, and a treasury for the money, to be composed of members of the House, and to be changed every session of Parliament:
(1). Four shillings per month wages advanced by the merchants to the office for the men, more than the office pays them.
(2). In consideration of the reducing men’s wages, and consequently freights, to the former prices (or near them), the owners of ships or merchants shall pay at the importation of all goods forty shillings per ton freight, to be stated upon all goods and ports in proportion; reckoning it on wine tonnage from Canaries as the standard, and on special freights in proportion to the freight formerly paid, and half the said price in times of peace.
Note.—This may well be done, and no burden; for if freights are reduced to their former prices (or near it), as they will be if wages are so too, then the merchant may well pay it: as, for instance, freight from Jamaica to London, formerly at £6 10s. per ton, now at £18 and £20; from Virginia, at £5 to £6 10s., now at £14, £16, and £17; from Barbadoes, at £6, now at £16; from Oporto, at £2, now at £6; and the like.
The payment of the above-said sums being a large bank for a fund, and it being supposed to be in fair hands and currently managed, the merchants shall further pay upon all goods shipped out, and shipped on board from abroad, for and from any port of this kingdom, £4 per cent. on the real value, bonâ fide; to be sworn to if demanded. In consideration whereof the said office shall be obliged to pay and make good all losses, damages, averages, and casualties whatsoever, as fully as by the custom of assurances now is done, without any discounts, rebates, or delays whatsoever; the said £4 per cent. to be stated on the voyage to the Barbadoes, and enlarged or taken off, in proportion to the voyage, by rules and laws to be printed and publicly known.
Reserving only, that then, as reason good, the said office shall have power to direct ships of all sorts, how and in what manner, and how long they shall sail with or wait for convoys; and shall have power (with limitations) to lay embargoes on ships, in order to compose fleets for the benefit of convoys.