received from the said lord high
admiral, or commissioners for executing the office of lord high admiral
for the time being."

HOUSE OF LORDS, JUNE 1, 1742.

The bill for the security and protection of trade and navigation being
this day read a second time in the house of lords, the earl of
WINCHELSEA, who had lately accepted the chair at the admiralty board,
rose and spoke as follows:

My lords, I know not by what accident the numerous defects and general
impropriety of this bill have escaped the attention of the other house;
nor is there any necessity for examining the motives upon which it
passed, or of inquiring whether its reception was facilitated by the
popularity of the title, the influence and authority of those by whom it
was proposed, or the imaginary defects of our present regulations, which
have been on some occasions represented to be such as it is scarcely
possible to change but for the better.

The knowledge and experience of those who concurred in sending this bill
for your lordships' approbation, cannot but produce some degree of
prepossession in its favour; for how can it be imagined, my lords, that
men of great abilities and continual opportunities of observation,
should not be well versed in questions relating chiefly to their private
interest, and discover the nearest way to their own success!

And yet, my lords, it will be found that their sagacity has, perhaps,
never so apparently forsaken them as on this occasion, that no
proposition was ever laid before this house, in which more contracted
motives were discovered, and that the bill is such as might rather have
been expected from petty traders, unacquainted with the situation of
kingdoms, the interests of princes, the arts of policy, the laws of
their own country, and the conduct of former wars; than by merchants of
extensive traffick, general correspondence, and great attainments.

Before I proceed, my lords, to confirm the character of the bill by a
distinct consideration of the particular paragraphs, and an enumeration
of the several improprieties and defects which may be found in it, I
think it not superfluous or unseasonable to remark one general errour,
common to this with all other laws of the same kind, the errour of
prescribing rules to military operations, of attempting to fix what is,
in its own nature, variable, as it must depend upon external causes to
which the British legislature has yet found no means of extending