The first errour, or rather one part of a general and complicated errour, is the computation of time, not by days, but by calendar months, which, as they are not equal one to another, may embarrass the account between the sailors and those that employ them. In all contracts of a short duration, the time is to be reckoned by weeks and days, by certain and regular periods, which has been so constantly the practice of the seafaring men, that, perhaps, many of them do not know the meaning of a calendar month: this, indeed, is a neglect of no great importance, because no man can be deprived by it of more than the wages due for the labour of a few days; but the other part of this clause is more seriously to be considered, as it threatens the sailors with greater injuries: for it is to be enacted, that all contracts made for more wages than are here allowed shall be totally void. It cannot be denied to be possible, and in my opinion it is very likely, that many contracts will be made without the knowledge of this law, and consequently without any design of violating it; but ignorance, inevitable ignorance, though it is a valid excuse for every other man, is no plea for the unhappy sailor; he must suffer, though innocent, the penalty of a crime; must undergo danger, hardships, and labour, without a recompense, and at the end of a successful voyage, after having enriched his country by his industry, return home to a necessitous family, without being able to relieve them. It is scarcely necessary, sir, to raise any more objections to a clause in which nothing is right; but, to show how its imperfections multiply upon the slightest consideration, I take the opportunity to observe, that there is no provision made for regulating the voyages performed in less time than a month, so that the greatest part of the abuses, which have been represented as the occasion of this clause, are yet without remedy, and only those sailors who venture far, and are exposed to the greatest dangers, are restrained from receiving an adequate reward. Thus much, sir, I have said upon the supposition that a regulation of the sailors' wages is either necessary or just; a supposition of which I am very far from discovering the truth. That it is just to oppress the most useful of our fellow-subjects, to load those men with peculiar hardships to whom we owe the plenty that we enjoy, the power that yet remains in the nation, and which neither the folly nor the cowardice of ministers have yet been able to destroy, and the security in which we now sit and hold our consultations; that it is just to lessen our payments at a time when we increase the labour of those who are hired, and to expose men to danger without recompense, will not easily be proved, even by those who are most accustomed to paradoxes, and are ready to undertake the proof of any position which it is their interest to find true.