_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).
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:
(1). Four shillings per month wages advanced by the merchants to the office for the men, more than the office pays them.