[The question being put, passed in the negative, 142 against 109.]

HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEB. 27, 1740-1.

DEBATE ON THE SECOND READING OF A BILL TO PREVENT INCONVENIENCIES ARISING FROM INSURANCE OF SHIPS.

The bill being read, sir John BARNARD spoke thus:—­Sir, there cannot be brought before this house any questions more difficult in themselves, more entangled with a multiplicity of relations, or more perplexed with an endless diversity of circumstances, than those which relate to commercial affairs; affairs on which the most experienced often disagree, and on which the most sagacious may deceive themselves with erroneous conjectures.

There are no questions, sir, which require so much personal knowledge of the subject to which they relate, nor is there any subject with which so few gentlemen in this house have had opportunities of being acquainted.  There are no questions, sir, which their variety of relations to different persons exposes to be so easily misrepresented without detection, nor any in which the opposition of particular interests so much incites a false representation.  In all these cases, deceit is easy, and there is a strong temptation to deceive.

Nor are these questions, sir, always perplexed by intentional fraud, or false assertions, of which they that utter them are themselves conscious.

Those who deceive us, do not always suppress any truth of which they are convinced, nor set facts before us in any other light, than that in which themselves behold them; they for the most part err with an honest intention, and propagate no mistakes but those which they have themselves admitted.

Of this kind, sir, are, doubtless, the measures proposed in the bill before us, which those by whom they are promoted may easily think to be of benefit to the publick, but which, I believe, will appear the result of imperfect views, and partial consideration.

The great and fundamental errour, sir, of the patrons of this bill, seems to be an opinion that the practice of insuring is not known to other nations, nor can be carried on in any other place; and from this principle they deduce consequences, which, if they were inevitably certain, might easily influence us to an immediate approbation of the bill, as necessary to secure our commerce, and distress our enemies.

They conclude, sir, with sufficient justness, that very few merchants would hazard their fortunes in long voyages or distant commerce, or expose themselves to the dangers of war, without the security which insurances afford them; and having persuaded themselves that such security is to be obtained from no other nation, they imagine that we might, by prohibiting it, confine all the foreign vessels in their ports, and destroy, by one resolution, the trade of both our rivals and our enemies.