points and interests, culminated at length in the abolition of that
most odious system of oppression from which they had sprung, and in a
charter of liberties before which the famous charter of King John
sinks into insignificance.

[Illustration: THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM.]

As a matter of policy the foreigner had first place in the list of
exemptions. He could volunteer if he chose, [Footnote: Strenuous
efforts were made in 1709 to induce the "Poor Palatines"--seven
thousand of them encamped at Blackheath, and two thousand in Sir John
Parson's brewhouse at Camberwell--to enter for the navy. But the
"thing was New to them to go aboard a Man of Warr," so they declined
the invitation, "having the Notion of being sent to Carolina."
--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Letters of Capt. Aston.] but
he must not be pressed. [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 17.] To
deprive him of his right in this respect was to invite unpleasant
diplomatic complications, of which England had already too many on her
hands. Trade, too, looked upon the foreigner as her perquisite, and
Trade must be indulged. Moreover, he fostered mutiny in the fleet,
where he was prone to "fly in the face" of authority and to refuse to
work, much less fight, for an alien people. If, however, he served on
board British merchant ships for two years, or if he married in
England, he at once lost caste, since he then became a naturalised
British subject and was liable to have even his honeymoon curtailed by
a visit from the press-gang. Such, in fact, was the fate of one
William Castle of Bristol in 1806. Pressed there in that year on his
return from the West Indies, he was discharged as a person of alien
birth; but having immediately afterwards committed the indiscretion of
taking a Bristol woman to wife, he was again pressed, this time within