If, Sir, I wanted any additional reason for opposing the address, it would best arise from the shameful neglect and inattention to those brave and humane French officers, (particularly the Captain of the Licorne,) lately on their parole at Alresford, half of whom, indeed, ministry have cruelly suffered to run away. Besides, Sir, let us advert to the wretched deficiency in our late naval equipments.⸺I have it, Sir, from undoubted authority, that the several ships crews laboured under a total deprivation of Tobacco. Tobacco! that staple commodity of our once flourishing subjects, now, alas, our avowed enemies, in Virginia, and the Southern colonies.—Sir, not only the quota of Gin was miserably retrenched, but adultery, so congenial to the _Noah_ of this day, pervaded every keg in the Royal Navy.—Sir, I myself know it for a fact, that the speaking trumpet of the Albion was sent out in so wretched a condition, that, in haling a fishing-boat, (I believe a cod-smack) off Scilly, the second mate cracked his pipe, and half the crew have been hoarse ever since—some of your ships, Sir, wanted their complement of Chaplains:—and in others, I will not say that I know there were not surgeons, but I will say, I do _not_ know that there were. Sir, more fatal consequences have arisen from a strange neglect of vegetables—Potatoes, radically rotten!—Carrots, diabolically dry!—Turnips, totally tough!—Parsnips, pitifully putrid!⸺Scurvy, Sir, Scurvy, like the angry Dæmon of Pestilence, has lighted up everlasting bon-fires in the blotched brows and cicatracious cheeks of your scarified seamen; so that every crew has flashed contagion, and reeked like a floating Pest-house, with the baneful exhalations of disease.—And now, Sir, that I’m on my legs, a word or two to trowzers—Such is the pitiful œconomy of Administration, such the paltry treachery of Contractors, that, what from an original coarseness of yarn, what, from the more pernicious and slovenly texture of the workmanship, not a trowzer but gaped with lacerations, whose expanded apertures discovered what⸺the P[a]rl[ia]m[e]nt[a]ry decorum of this house, forbids me to reveal. Spurred on by such powerful incentives, I take this earliest occasion to give notice to the house, that I shall move, on this day fortnight, for the house to resolve itself into a Committee, in order to take into consideration the several weighty grievances, the outline of which I have just now had the honour to give you a rude sketch.—When, I shall also move you, Sir, that the several Maltsters, Distillers of Gin, Venders of Tobacco, Traders in Trowzers, Retailers of Rum, Picklers of Pork, and Purveyors of Potatoes, together with their several servants, followers, apprentices and retainers, be ordered to attend this house _de die in diem_, to answer all such questions and matters touching the said enquiry, as shall be put to them by the Committee so to be appointed.—In the mean time, Sir, I shall give my hearty concurrence to the noble