other house, it is not necessary to remind your lordships, who know,
that to this class of men our nation is indebted for all the advantages
that it possesses above those which we behold with compassion or
contempt, for its wealth and power, and perhaps for its liberty and
civility. To the merchants, my lords, we owe that our name is known
beyond our own coasts, and that our influence is not confined to the
narrow limits of a single island.

Let us not, therefore, my lords, reject with contempt what is proposed
and solicited by men of this class; men whose experience and knowledge
cannot but have enabled them to offer something useful and important,
though, perhaps, for want of acquaintance with former laws, they may
have imagined those provisions now first suggested, which have only been
forgotten, and petitioned for the enaction of a new law, when they
needed only an enforcement of former statutes.

That our naval force has, in the present war, been misapplied; that our
commerce has been exposed to petty spoilers, in a degree never known
before; that our convoys have been far from adding security to our
traders; and that with the most powerful fleet in the world, we have
suffered all that can fall upon the most defenceless nation, cannot be
denied.

Nor is it any degree of temerity, my lords, to affirm, that these
misfortunes have been brought upon us by either negligence or treachery;
for, besides that no other cause can be assigned for the losses which a
powerful people suffer from an enemy of inferiour force, there is the
strongest authority for asserting, that our maritime affairs have been
ill conducted, and that, therefore, the regulation of them is very
seasonably and properly solicited by the merchants.