Economics -- Early works to 1800; Finance -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Economic conditions -- 18th century
2. No man whatsoever, seaman or other, but applying himself to the said
office to be employed as a sailor, should immediately enter into pay, and
receive for every able seaman 24s. per month, and juniors in proportion;
to receive half-pay while unemployed, and liberty to work for themselves:
only to be at call of the office, and leave an account where to be found.
3. No sailor could desert, because no employment would be to be had
elsewhere.
4. All ships at their clearing at the Custom House should receive a
ticket to the office for men, where would be always choice rather than
scarcity, who should be delivered over by the office to the captain or
master without any trouble or delay; all liberty of choice to be allowed
both to master and men, only so as to give up all disputes to the
officers appointed to decide.
_Note_.—By this would be avoided the great charge captains and owners are
at to keep men on board before they are ready to go; whereas now the care
of getting men will be over, and all come on board in one day: for, the
captain carrying the ticket to the office, he may go and choose his men
if he will; otherwise they will be sent on board to him, by tickets sent
to their dwellings to repair on board such a ship.
5. For all these men that the captain or master of the ship takes he
shall pay the office, not the seamen, 28s. per month (which 4s. per month
overplus of wages will be employed to pay the half-pay to the men out of
employ), and so in proportion of wages for juniors.
6. All disputes concerning the mutinying of mariners, or other matters
of debate between the captains and men, to be tried by way of appeal in a
court for that purpose to be erected, as aforesaid.
7. All discounting of wages and time, all damages of goods, averages,
stopping of pay, and the like, to be adjusted by stated and public rules
and laws in print, established by the same Act of Parliament, by which
means all litigious suits in the Court of Admiralty (which are infinite)
would be prevented.
8. No ship that is permitted to enter at the Custom House and take in
goods should ever be refused men, or delayed in the delivering them above
five days after a demand made and a ticket from the Custom House
delivered (general cases, as arrests and embargoes, excepted).
_The Consequences of this Method_.
1. By this means the public would have no want of seamen, and all the
charges and other inconveniences of pressing men would be prevented.
2. The intolerable oppression upon trade, from the exorbitance of wages
and insolence of mariners, would be taken off.
3. The following sums of money should be paid to the office, to lie in
bank as a public fund for the service of the nation, to be disposed of by
order of Parliament, and not otherwise; a committee being a ways
substituted in the intervals of the session to audit the accounts, and a
treasury for the money, to be composed of members of the House, and to be
changed every session of Parliament:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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