ult of those inquiries and those reflections which I
have made on this occasion, your lordships will judge it not improper to
refer it to a committee.

Nothing, my lords, is more necessary to the legislature than the
affection and esteem of the people; all government consists in the
authority of the _few_ over the _many_, and authority, therefore, can be
founded only on opinion, and must always fall to the ground, when that
which supports it is taken away.

For this reason, my lords, it is worthy of this most august and awful
assembly, to endeavour to convince the people of our solicitude for
their happiness, and our compassion for their sufferings; lest we should
seem elevated by the casual advantages of birth and fortune above regard
to the lower classes of mankind; lest we should seem exalted above
others only to neglect them, and invested with power only to exert it in
acts of wanton oppression; lest high rank should in time produce hatred
rather than reverence, and superiority of fortune only tempt rapine and
excite rebellion.

The bill now under our consideration, my lords, cannot be rejected
without danger of exasperating the nation, without affording to the
discontented and malevolent an opportunity of representing this house as
regardless of the publick miseries, and deaf to the cries of our
fellow-subjects languishing in captivity, and mourning in poverty. The
melancholy and dejected will naturally conceive us inebriated with
affluence, and elated with dignity, endeavouring to remove from our eyes
every spectacle of misery, and to turn aside from those lamentations
which may interrupt the enjoyment of our felicity.

Nor, indeed, can it be justly said, that such representations are
without grounds, when we consider the important occasion on which this
bill is drawn up, the bitterness of those calamities which it is
intended to redress, and the authority by which it is recommended to us.

It may naturally be expected, my lords, that the title of a bill for the
protection and security of trade, should raise an uncommon degree of
ardour and attention; it might be conceived that every lord in this
house would be ambitious of signalizing his zeal for the interest of his
country, by proposing, on this occasion, every expedient which
experience or information had suggested to him; and that instead of
setting ourselves free from the labour of inquiry and the anxiety of
deliberation, by raising objections to the bi