discretionary command over men, who, beyond all others, have their peculiar prejudices, manners, and ideas of submission. Had the friends of humanity taken up the interests of our mercantile seamen, with the same zeal that they manifested on questions of much less importance, and compared their situation with that of French conscripts or negro slaves, they would have found the condition of the latter almost enviable, when contrasted with that of the former. The conscript law was a general law of the land, and acted equally on all men; and as to the West Indian slave, the master has a particular interest in his welfare; whereas, the abuses of impressment, and the arbitrary conduct of many naval officers, with the refuse of mankind acting under them, accompanied by the stern wants of the public service, expose our mercantile seamen in time of war to such oppression and insult, that the suffering of the two former classes of persons may be considered comparatively light. The masters of merchant-ships and their officers are not exempt in their persons or property from this system of abuse, contrary as it is to express regulations.

Had the same attention been paid by you and others to British seamen, as to the enslaved African, the public would, no doubt, have been informed, if the various circumstances' oftentimes related as founded on fact, were true; if so, they would deserve public exposure, in order to correct the evil. If unfounded, they ought to be formally contradicted, with a view to efface that aversion to the naval service, which such rumors have on the minds of our seamen and lads, as well as to diminish the causes of desertion, which are already too numerous. My view in alluding to this, is to direct your attention and that of other friends of humanity to a class of men to whom the country is peculiarly indebted, who have raised its glory to its highest pitch, and extended its influence to the boundaries of the earth. If you will inquire into their hardships, you will find that they are not inferior, at times, to those sustained by the negro slave. I am well aware, that my remarks will pass unheeded, or obtain a very slight attention, from the prepossessions which generally prevail in favor of our naval serviceblind fatality!

It has been advanced by officers, of late years, that they can train men for the navy, in a short space of time, to answer all the purposes of the service. That courage and physical strength may belong to any man, I readily believe; however, when the Americans made war upon us, their confidence received a check, for

'Here is a field for the research and the sensibility of the philanthropist, and to a certain degree will account for the difficulty to procure men to man our ships on the peace establishment.

they soon found that men, possessing the skill and conduct of regularly bred seamen, were wanting to cope with the enemy. This truth will be equally conspicuous in every future contest, unless proper methods are taken to frame a system, by which the country may be served with regularly bred seamen, who can alone secure her pre-eminence at sea.

Having understood that you see most things in a religious point of view, I shall beg leave to direct your attention to what has happened in Europe, since the year 1789, down to the present period. Providence has given a lesson to all the European powers, and that in the most pointed manner, by severely visiting them in what they valued most, and in which they supposed they were least of all assailable.

France; Paris,-the Sodom and Gomorrah' of the day,-where the king was generally reverenced more than the Supreme Being; yet, what was his fate? His power was first undermined by false reasoning, and next, he was murdered by those apostles of anarchy and impiety, the jacobins and sceptics. His murderers, in their turn, were trampled upon by a man, who rose out of their own body, and who united in his own person all their vices.

Prussia, raised by the events of war, and who valued herself on the formidable strength of her army, saw it totally annihilated, in one day, by this child, champion, and scourge of jacobinism.

Holland, the modern Carthage, where every thing was venal, and where the best sentiments of the human mind were absorbed in pecuniary interest;-this nation was plundered in an extraordinary degree, and robbed of what it prized above honor and patriotism. Austria, a state which valued itself on the pre-eminence of its reinging family, was reduced to the most mortifying of all degradations, that of sacrificing a princess of this illustrious house to a usurper, and who, at the same time, was its most cruel enemy.

Russia, who considered herself unassailable, and capable of defying the combined enmity of all the other powers of Europe, on account of her geographical situation, and the magnitude of her military establishment, saw the same conqueror penetrate to the heart of her empire, and was obliged to burn the sacred city, to save herself from subjugation.

The victor himself, lifted up in his own imagination beyond human nature, and the assaults of adverse fortune, was, in the very midst of this proud security, tumbled down at once from all his grandeur, and through a visible manifestation of Divine Power.

'I apply this epithet in consequence of a story related to me by an officer of the French king's guard in 1790,

Though allowed to rise again, it was only to make his second fall a greater and more memorable lesson to mankind,

Our own country, who valued herself on the supposed invincibility of her navy, has, in several engagements, been foiled by a nation possessing only a few ships, but those manned by mercantile

seamen.

At present, the people of France have all the nations of Europe upon them, to punish them for their past ambition, and to cure them of their mad passion for universal empire. Sir, I have produced these instances, to show that Eternal Justice never slumbers, and that pride, when it becomes too towering, defying divine and human precepts, is certain of being punished in the very height of its presumption. I have also enumerated those examples, in order to prove that the suggestions of human prudence, too often despised in the hour of prosperity, are never deviated from with impunity. To retain power, it is indispensably necessary to cultivate the means by which it was acquired: this remark is peculiarly applicable to naval ascendancy.

Those few observations also suffice to prove, that the Supreme Being has been giving a lesson to governments and people, for the regulation of their respective conduct, as well as to show, that their happiness is inseparable. To the former it has been palpably manifested, that the rights and privileges of their subjects are as sacred as their own, which it is not only their duty, but their interest, to protect. To the people it has been proved, that strict obedience is due, on their part, to laws framed for the general good, for the order and welfare of society; and, that they are bound to respect, and submit to, those who have the cares, the duties, and the awful responsibility of governing men.

Let us now apply this grave lesson to our own country: it appears to have been selected from amongst the nations of the earth, and raised by Divine Providence to an extraordinary height of power, first to check, and next destroy, the power of the scourge of mankind yet, when we reflect on the check we received ourselves, and that from a people we were in the habit of despising, the more we ought to be impressed with the necessity of deriving benefit from that lesson, particularly as our vital interest depends upon its observance.

Carthage exercised the same empire over the sea, which we do now. When the first causes of dispute broke out between that state and Rome, the latter had not a single galley, and no other shipping than a few coasting-vessels. At that time the Carthaginians covered the seas with their ships of war, yet the Romans were not discouraged; with the perseverance and spirit of enterprise, characteristic of that great and wise people, and which difficulties

only irritated, they were able at last to encounter their rival upon her own element, and to destroy gradually her power, her commerce, and at last her existence !

Let us now, Sir, come to a point which begins to attract much and very general attention; I allude to the outrages so long exercised by the Algerines.

Can it be otherwise than mortifying to men of my profession, that they are obliged to have recourse to a Mediterranean pass, to enable them to navigate that sea with safety? It does not well accord with our naval superiority. I merely advert to this circumstance, to show how the government of the United States, the naval department of which is guided by mercantile seamen, recently conducted itself; and, I have no doubt, that the severe correction inflicted by the American navy upon the piratical states, will rank amongst the first causes to foster the rising spirit of that commercial state. As one of the objects of my letter is to prevent this spirit from becoming formidable to ourselves, the circumstance I have just mentioned offers another inducement to man our navy with regularly bred seamen, for to this point alone the Americans are indebted for any distinction they may have acquired in their recent maritime operations.

Who were the first men that raised the commerce of this and every other state? Mercantile seamen,

Who fought the early battles of this country, and gave to it the rank of a maritime power? Mercantile seamen.

Who have principally contributed to raise our navy to its present state? Mercantile seamen.

Who fought the first battles of the late war, until the navies of Europe were subdued? Mercantile seamen.

Who was the cause of the renovation of the transport service since the year 1803, and thus added much to the political welfare of the country, besides saving some millions of money?

cantile seaman.

A mer

Who submits the present plan, founded on a progressive system of emulation and reward, for a more effectual mode of manning the navy? A mercantile seaman.

I am far from mentioning these facts from motives of personal vanity, but wish merely to point out the incongruity, and indeed ingratitude, of suffering a class of men, to whom the country chiefly owes its prosperity and consequence, to be exposed to the hard

I can produce proofs to this last statement, if called on; and they will prove the advantage of mercantile bred seamen in the management of nautical affairs; for I consider it owing to this cause that the alteration of system I then recommended had the desired effect.

ships I have enumerated. This disregard to their interests and rights is the more unaccountable, when it is considered that a criminal in a jail, if he happen to sustain harsh treatment, is certain to meet an advocate in parliament to espouse his injury: yet, the British mercantile seaman, the main pillar of the state, has hitherto found none, either in the legislature or executive, to stand forward in his cause.

You may perhaps express some surprise, that a private individual should take up a task of this magnitude, instead of leaving it to the Admiralty Board or to naval officers, who from peculiar sources of information, may appear to you, as they do to many others, more competent to the task. The inattention hitherto manifested by both to this great object, is an answer to one part of the question, whilst I deny the superior competency; naval-bred officers, through the want of proper experience, and from the abuses inseparable from uncontrolled command, are very incompetent to form a plan for raising and managing mercantile seamen, who can never divest themselves of a sense of their rights as free-born subjects, which is constantly wounded by the arbitrary nature of the discipline established in our navy. My plan is, to do away with the necessity of this arbitrary treatment. To raise seamen, and to form their minds to volunteer their services into the navy, which can only be done by blending the two services to a certain extent together; as seamen have, of all other men, the strongest prepossessions where their profession is concerned, they never will cheerfully submit to be commanded by men who are not seamen like themselves.

A naval-bred officer, according to the present training, cannot possibly acquire the proper knowledge of commanding merchant seamen; his only resource is the strong arm of power, which disgusts and alienates the minds of men trained as the former are. This proves the indispensable necessity of commencing a total renovation of our naval system, which can only be done effectually by bringing the subject before the legislature, where the merits of the question can be fully discussed in a committee, who could examine intelligent and experienced men from both services, naval and mercantile. It is only by an inquiry of this nature that the subject can be completely canvassed and understood; and I feel persuaded, from my own knowledge and experience, that the improvements I suggest may be rendered of much easier execution than is generally imagined. When did merchant seamen hesitate to volunteer their services to fight the battles of their country when the public service required it? If any lukewarmness was ever manifested, it arose solely from the dread of being detained for an undefined period in the naval service. As the whole course of our history