Some of the expedients mentioned in this bill, I shall readily concur
with the noble lord in censuring and rejecting; I am very far from
thinking it expedient to invest the governours of our colonies with any
new degree of power, or to subject the captains of our ships of war to
their command. I have lived, my lords, to see many successions of those
petty monarchs, and have known few whom I would willingly trust with the
exercise of great authority. It is not uncommon, my lords, for those to
be made cruel and capricious by power, who were moderate and prudent in
lower stations; and if the effects of exaltation are to be feared even
in good men, what may not be expected from it in those, whom nothing but
a distant employment could secure from the laws, and who, if they had
not been sent to America to govern, must probably have gone thither on a
different occasion?

The noble duke, who has vindicated the bill with arguments to which very
little can be added, and to which I believe nothing can be replied, has
expressed his unwillingness to concur in any measures for the execution
of which new officers must be appointed. An increase of officers, my
lords, is, indeed, a dreadful sound, a sound that cannot but forebode
the ruin of our country; the number of officers already established is
abundantly sufficient for all useful purposes, nor can any addition be
made but to the ruin of our constitution.

I am, therefore, of opinion, that no new officer was intended by those
that drew up the bill, and that they proposed only to furnish those that
loiter in our ports, at the expense of the publick, with an opportunity
of earning their salaries by some useful employment.

I know not, indeed, my lords, whether any good effects can be reasonably
hoped from this provision; whether men accustomed to connivance and