The
melancholy and dejected will naturally conceive us inebriated with
affluence, and elated with dignity, endeavouring to remove from our eyes
every spectacle of misery, and to turn aside from those lamentations
which may interrupt the enjoyment of our felicity.
Nor, indeed, can it be justly said, that such representations are
without grounds, when we consider the important occasion on which this
bill is drawn up, the bitterness of those calamities which it is
intended to redress, and the authority by which it is recommended to us.
It may naturally be expected, my lords, that the title of a bill for the
protection and security of trade, should raise an uncommon degree of
ardour and attention; it might be conceived that every lord in this
house would be ambitious of signalizing his zeal for the interest of his
country, by proposing, on this occasion, every expedient which
experience or information had suggested to him; and that instead of
setting ourselves free from the labour of inquiry and the anxiety of
deliberation, by raising objections to the bill and rejecting it, we
should labour with unanimous endeavours, and incessant assiduity, to
supply its defects, and correct its improprieties; to show that a design
so beneficial can never be proposed to us without effect, and that
whenever we find honest zeal, we shall be ready to assist it with
judgment and experience.
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