so-called Statutes of Exemption which, in protecting from impressment
certain persons or classes of persons, proceeded on the assumption, so
dear to the Sea Lords, that the Crown possessed the right to press
all. This also was the view taken by Yorke, Solicitor-General in 1757.
"I take the prerogative," he declares, "to be most clearly legal."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions,
1733-56, No. 102.]

Another group of lawyers took similar, though less exalted ground. Of
these the most eminent was that "great oracle of law," Lord Mansfield.
"The power of pressing," he contends, "is founded upon immemorial
usage allowed for ages. If not, it can have no ground to stand upon.
The practice is deduced from that trite maxim of the Constitutional
Law of England, that private mischief had better be submitted to than
that public detriment should ensue."

The sea-lawyer had yet to be heard. With him "private mischief"
counted for much, the usage of past ages for very little. He lived and
suffered in the present. Of common law he knew nothing, but he
possessed a fine appreciation of common justice, and this forced from
him an indictment of the system that held him in thrall as scathing in
its truth, its simplicity and its logic as it is spontaneous and
untutored in its diction.

"You confidently tell us," said he, dipping his pen in the gall of
bitterness, "that our King is a father to us and our officers friends.
They are so, we must confess, in some respects, for Indeed they use us
like Children in Whiping us into Obedience. As for English Tars to be
the Legitimate Sons of Liberty, it is an Old Cry which we have
Experienced and Knows it to be False. God knows, the Constitution is