Let any gentleman in this house, let those, sir, who now sit at ease, projecting laws of oppression, and conferring upon their own slaves such licentious authority, pause a few moments, and imagine themselves exposed to the same hardships by a power superiour to their own; let them conceive themselves torn from the tenderness and caresses of their families by midnight irruptions, dragged in triumph through the streets by a despicable officer, and placed under the command of those by whom they have, perhaps, been already oppressed and insulted. Why should we imagine that the race of men for whom those cruelties are preparing, have less sensibility than ourselves? Why should we believe that they will suffer without complaint, and be injured without resentment? Why should we conceive that they will not at once deliver themselves, and punish their oppressors, by deserting that country where they are considered as felons, and laying hold on those rewards and privileges which no other government will deny them?
This is, indeed, the only tendency, whatever may have been the intention of the bill before us; for I know not whether the most refined sagacity can discover any other method of discouraging navigation than those which are drawn together in the bill before us. We first give our constables an authority to hunt the sailors like thieves, and drive them, by incessant pursuit, out of the nation; but lest any man should by friendship, good fortune, or the power of money, find means of staying behind, we have with equal wisdom condemned him to poverty and misery; and lest the natural courage of his profession should incite him to assist his country in the war, have contrived a method of precluding him from any advantage that he might have the weakness to hope from his fortitude and diligence. What more can be done, unless we at once prohibit to seamen the use of the common elements, or doom them to a general proscription.
It is just that advantage, sir, should be proportioned to the hazard by which it is to be obtained, and, therefore, a sailor has an honest claim to an advance of wages in time of war; it is necessary to excite expectation, and to fire ambition by the prospect of great acquisitions, and by this prospect it is that such numbers are daily allured to naval business, and that our privateers are filled with adventurers. The large wages which war makes necessary, are more powerful incentives to those whom impatience of poverty determines to change their state of life, than the secure gains of peaceful commerce; for the danger is overlooked by a mind intent upon the profit.
War is the harvest of a sailor, in which he is to store provisions for the winter of old age, and if we blast this hope, he will inevitably sink into indolence and cowardice.
Many of the sailors are bred up to trades, or capable of any laborious employment upon land; nor is there any reason for which they expose themselves to the dangers of a seafaring life, but the hope of sudden wealth, and some lucky season in which they may improve their fortunes by a single effort. Is it reasonable to believe that all these will not rather have recourse to their former callings, and live in security, though not in plenty, than encounter danger and poverty at once, and face an enemy without any prospect of recompense?
Let any man recollect the ideas that arose in his mind upon hearing of a bill for encouraging and increasing sailors, and examine whether he had any expectation of expedients like these. I suppose it was never known before, that men were to be encouraged by subjecting them to peculiar penalties, or that to take away the gains of a profession, was a method of recommending it more generally to the people.
But it is not of very great importance to dwell longer upon the impropriety of this clause, which there is no possibility of putting in execution. That the merchants will try every method of eluding a law so prejudicial to their interest, may be easily imagined, and a mind not very fruitful of evasions, will discover that this law may be eluded by a thousand artifices. If the merchants are restrained from allowing men their wages beyond a certain sum, they will make contracts for the voyage, of which the time may very easily be computed, they may offer a reward for expedition and fidelity, they may pay a large sum by way of advance, they may allow the sailors part of the profits, or may offer money by a third hand. To fix the price of any commodity, of which the quantity and the use may vary their proportions, is the most excessive degree of ignorance. No man can determine the price of corn, unless he can regulate the harvest, and keep the number of the people for ever at a stand.
But let us suppose these methods as efficacious as their most sanguine vindicators are desirous of representing them, it does not yet appear that they are necessary, and to inflict hardships without necessity, is by no means the practice of either wisdom or benevolence. To tyrannise and compel is the low pleasure of petty capacities, of narrow minds, swelled with the pride of uncontroulable authority, the wantonness of wretches who are insensible of the consequences of their own actions, and of whom candour may, perhaps, determine, that they are only cruel because they are stupid. Let us not exalt into a precedent the most unjust and rigorous law of our predecessors, of which they themselves declared their repentance, or confessed the inefficacy, by never reviving it; let us rather endeavour to gain the sailors by lenity and moderation, and reconcile them to the service of the crown by real encouragements; for it is rational to imagine, that in proportion as men are disgusted by injuries, they will be won by kindness.
There is one expedient, sir, which deserves to be tried, and from which, at least, more success may be hoped than from cruelty, hunger, and persecution. The ships that are now to be fitted out for service, are those of the first magnitude, which it is usual to bring back into the ports in winter. Let us, therefore, promise to all seamen that shall voluntarily engage in them, besides the reward already proposed, a discharge from the service at the end of six or seven months. By this they will be released from their present dread of perpetual slavery, and be certain, as they are when in the service of the merchants, of a respite from their fatigues. The trade of the nation will be only interrupted for a time, and may be carried on in the winter months, and large sums will be saved by dismissing the seamen when they cannot be employed.
By adding this to the other methods of encouragement, and throwing aside all rigorous and oppressive schemes, the navy may easily be manned, our country protected, our commerce reestablished, and our enemies subdued; but to pass the bill as it now stands, is to determine that trade shall cease, and that no ship shall sail out of the river.