The last chapter in this book is a proposal about entering all the
seamen in England into the king's pay--a subject which deserves to
be enlarged into a book itself; and I have a little volume of
calculations and particulars by me on that head, but I thought them
too long to publish. In short, I am persuaded, was that method
proposed to those gentlemen to whom such things belong, the greatest
sum of money might be raised by it, with the least injury to those
who pay it, that ever was or will be during the war.

Projectors, they say, are generally to be taken with allowance of
one-half at least; they always have their mouths full of millions,
and talk big of their own proposals. And therefore I have not
exposed the vast sums my calculations amount to; but I venture to
say I could procure a farm on such a proposal as this at three
millions per annum, and give very good security for payment--such an
opinion I have of the value of such a method; and when that is done,
the nation would get three more by paying it, which is very strange,
but might easily be made out.

In the chapter of academies I have ventured to reprove the vicious
custom of swearing. I shall make no apology for the fact, for no
man ought to be ashamed of exposing what all men ought to be ashamed
of practising. But methinks I stand corrected by my own laws a
little, in forcing the reader to repeat some of the worst of our
vulgar imprecations, in reading my thoughts against it; to which,
however, I have this to reply:

First, I did not find it easy to express what I mean without putting
down the very words--at least, not so as to be very intelligible.