and limitations, was committed, the amendments which the Committee had made to the Bill; and which they had directed him to report to the House; and he read the Report in his place, and afterwards delivered the Bill, with the amendments, in at the Clerk's table, where the amendments were once read throughout; and then a second time, one by one; and upon the question severally put thereupon, were agreed to by the House.

Mr. John Luttrell said: Sir, I am induced to offer a few observations upon the imperfections of the Bill before you, that we may not too hastily adopt an opinion which has been frequently held forth by the friends of Administration, that, provided our trade from Great Britain and Ireland should increase, though that of America do suffer, you will have a greater number of Seamen. Sir, it has been said, in support of the assertion I have alluded to, that very few American Seamen return in English Vessels from that Coast. I think it a very fortunate circumstance that they do not, because we have no employment for them, and they therefore must become a burthen to this country. But I will appeal to my Naval friends on the other side of the House, whose knowledge of maritime concerns is very extensive, if American Seamen are not always impressed in every part of the world to man the King's Ships whenever the service requires men? I am sure the books of the Northumberland, Sterling, Castle, Southerland, Success, Lizard, and many other Ships stationed upon the Coasts of either America, in the course of the last war, will furnish us with very long lists of them; but they have hitherto been so intermixed with the Seamen of this country, and always considered (as I hope they ever will be) equally valuable, and as one and the same people, that I believe it never yet occurred to the Commanding Officer of any Squadron employed in times of war, either in the West Indies, America, or elsewhere, to make a particular inquiry into their numbers; the idea would have been accounted as unnecessary and strange as the distinction is new, ridiculous, and dangerous. But, sir, I have ever considered America to be a great nursery, where Seamen are raised, trained, and maintained in times of peace to serve this country in times of war, and though I shall readily admit, from the distance of their shores, that you cannot lay hands upon them the first half hour of an Armament, yet am I persuaded that you may be possessed of some thousands within the time usually prescribed for the return of English Seamen from foreign services. As I am up, sir, I would wish to say a word or two upon that part of die Bill which principally relates to the Commanders of his Majesty's. Ships-of-War, employed for what the Bill styles the protection, but would be much more properly termed the destruction: of the trade, and it may possibly not be found quite so easy in practice as to some people it appears in theory, either to seize these Vessels, or to discover false clearances or certificates. There are those that hear me, who perfectly well remember the variety of dexterous tricks practised in the course of the late war, by almost every Nation, with respect to false clearances and certificates: the difficulties attending the detection, and the uncertainty of the event. There are those in America who bear in memory the shameful decisions respecting Monto Christo men. They will be aware that though the Vessels be condemned, and shared in America, they must be liable to appeals at home, and perhaps be obliged to refund, when the Seamen have spent the money, and the Captain (as has been the case) is made answerable for the whole. I have no doubt but the Americans, by being put into the calamitous situation they are, and feeling the tyranny of the mother country, will endeavour to carry on a trade at the risk of the fine imposed under this Act of Parliament; but there are few Sea Officers who, after a long peace, will find money to throwaway upon such ungracious prosecutions; nor do I believe that they will wish to prosecute their fellow-subjects in a manner which may appear to them to he arbitrary and unconstitutional; besides we have been too roughly handled by the civil law courts, to wish to have many dealings with them. Sir, on the score of seizure, I shall revert to my former arguments, that the King's Ships cannot keep the Seas in safety, in the Northern parts of the Coasts of America, for more than half the year. Whenever: they can cruize, the Americans will have the advantages, that a perfect knowledge of the shoals, soundings, rocks, creeks, and places of shelter can afford them; by which means they must' frequently escape your most vigilant researches: besides it is not a very pleasant service for an Officer to risk the King's Ships upon a leeshore, with which he is totally unacquainted, not in pursuit of an enemy, but to destroy a friend. Upon the whole, sir, I consider this Bill to be somewhat less cruel than that which is meant to demolish the New England Provinces by famine; in every other respect I hold it to be equally mischievous. It is with real concern I see humanity and sound policy giving way to that hated revenge which involves indiscriminately the innocent with the guilty. By this oppressive Act you will certainly extend the unhappy differences which already but too generally prevail in America, to every Province; nay, I fear I may say, to almost every individual upon that vast Continent: therefore, I protest against the measure.

Mr. Temple Luttrell. Sir: it is but too visible, from the rash measures pursued by the Ministers of your Government here in England, and from the temper and situation of your American Colonies, that a civil war will be inevitable. Gentlemen on the other side of the House have always held as a favourite proposition, that protection and obedience are reciprocal duties; and of course, that the withdrawing of the one discharges the other. Now, sir, by these Bills you are withdrawing your protection to some purpose; I therefore presume your Colonies are no longer to be treated as Rebels, but, whatever may be the hazard of battle, will be entitled to the same military honours, to the same acts of clemency and of grace, that are usually practised, according to the modern system of war, by every civilized Nation in the world. You have a striking example of such rule of conduct from ancient time, in the most flagrant and sanguinary of all the wars the Romans ever waged: I mean the war against their own countrymen, commonly called the Social War; a war that, in many of its circumstances, bears so close a resemblance to the present unhappy era in our history, that I cannot help asking leave of the House to say a few words upon it. The passions of mankind, in the aggregate, are, throughput all ages, nearly alike; and the same probable event may; in future, be looked for from those causes to which they have heretofore been found incidental.

Several confederate Italian Provinces, to whose courage and industry the Roman Republick, in a great measure, owed her meridian splendour, despairing to obtain, by fair means, those privileges to which they had every reasonable claim, took up arms: they founded a new capital; they constituted a Senate to themselves, and they choose Consuls. The mass of the people of Rome, who stedfastly maintained those principles, which are the genuine principles of British Whiggism—a devotion to rational liberty, and a spirit of resistance to all exorbitant power where soever lodged—called aloud for vengeance on their Ministers and patricians, to whose iniquity they ascribed every impending evil. Sir, a resolute Tribune (and I hope worthy Chief Magistrate of this metropolis will now take the hint) did impeach the ostensible contrivers and managers of so unnatural a war. And recollect, sir, how it ended: the Roman Senate, though aided by their old, enemies the Gauls, and by some scattered factions in the heart of the revolted country, whose patriotism, like that of certain New-Yorkists, was not quite proof against state artifices and venality:—I say, sir, the Roman Senate was at length compelled to cede, with a very bad grace those terms which ought at first, in justice, to have been accorded by amicable compact. During this civil conflict was spilt the best blood of Home: in less than three' years near three hundred thousand persons fell in the field of combat. But there was a still more fatal consequence; for it was in this school that Marius, Sylla, and other aspiring leaders, learned their first rudiments of despotism, and familiarized themselves to the massacre of their fellow-subjects. That sword which was unsheathed by order of the Roman Senate, and under the authority of the Roman people, to deprive of the dearest rights of human nature, their allies, their associates, and brethren, was not returned into its scabbard till Rome herself had, at her inmost vitals, felt the sharpness of its edge. The Generals employed on that occassion were many of them men of heroick sentiments, of humane dispositions; they might have sat for the: amiable portraits