all suspicion of indiscretion or malice.  I may presume it to be the common conviction of the merchants, that in such hands they will be safe:  since they have made no opposition to the bill, in it’s progress; and since they have offered no appearance against it, by counsel at your lordships bar.  And, truly, my lords, if the bill be, thus, superior to all objection; I can affirm, that the necessities, the wrongs, of those who are employed in the naval service of their country, most loudly call for the redress which it proposes!  From the highest admiral in the service, to the poorest cabin-boy that walks the street, there is not a man but may be in distress, with large sums of wages due to him, of which he shall, by no diligence of request be able to obtain payment; not a man, whose intreaties will be readily answered, with aught but insult, at the proper places for his application, if he come not with particular recommendations to a preference.  From the highest admiral, to the meanest seaman, whatever may be the sums of prize-money due to him, no man can tell when he may securely call any part of it his own.  A man may have forty thousand pounds due to him, in prize-money; and yet may be dismissed, without a shilling, if he ask for it at the proper office without particular recommendation.  Are these things to be tolerated?  Is it for the interest, is it for the honour, of the country, that they should not as speedily as possible be redressed?  I should be as unwilling as any man, to give an overweening preference to the interests of my own profession; but I cannot help thinking that, under all the circumstances of the business, your lordships will be strongly disposed to advance this bill into a law, as speedily as may be consistent with the order of your proceedings, and with due preference of deliberation!”

Next day, in a committee of the whole house, on the third reading of this celebrated bill, the Duke of Clarence having suggested the propriety of instituting a distinct enquiry, under a particular act, into the abuses of prize-money, Lord Nelson expressed himself to be of the same opinion; but, though severely animadverting on the flagrant enormities of prize-agents, his lordship, nevertheless, candidly acknowledged, that there might be instances where the delays of the payment of prize-money resulted, not from the villainy of the agents, but from accidents by no means easily avoidable in the common course of human affairs.  In regarding the naval interests of his country, Lord Nelson was not unmindful of it’s commercial prosperity; in censuring criminal abuses, he was careful not to involve innocence with guilt.