addition to the policy; for in the rates of insurance which I have given, the extra charge of the honorary stipulations are included. For six per cent. the British underwriter, will warrant Spanish property, knowing it to be such, from the Havannah to Spain, by way of America; though he receives what is equal to seven, on British property, of the same description, carried with convoy, and in far better bottoms, from Jamaica to London:

The proportion of this premium, which may be reckoned as the price of the secret undertaking, is, I understand, one per cent. It can not be much more; since the excess of the whole war premium above that which was paid on the direct voyage in time of peace, is only two per cent. The point is of no importance to our calculation; but it is striking to reflect, how small an additional premium is enough to compensate the insurer for the risque of the detection of hostile property under the neutral cover, in this commodious new invented course of the colonial trade. Can we wonder that Buonaparte should be indignant and clamorous at the late attempts of our prize court to restrain it.

The underwriters of America have pretty nearly agreed with our own, in the appreciation of the trivial danger from British hostilities, in this great branch of commerce. In July and August last,

the average premiums at New York and Philadelphia, on the separate branches of the double West-India voyage, without any warranty of neutrality, were about 3 per cent. or 7 in the whole, from the West Indies by way of America to Europe. Insurance in that country, is naturally a little dearer than in England; and the rates of premiums at Lloyd's, probably regulate, with an advance of about one per cent. in general, the price of insurance in the United States.

It is impossible here to abstain from some digressive remarks, on the conduct of the British underwriters. They are, certainly, in general, very respectable men; and comprise within their body, merchants of great eminence in the most honourable walks of commerce. It is fair to presume, therefore, that their common concurrence in any practice contrary to the duties of good subjects, and upright men, can only proceed from inadvertency or mistake. I would intreat them then to reflect seriously, on the nature and consequences of these honorary engagements, falsely so called, into which the secret agents of our enemies have seduced them.

Let me remind them of the moral obligation, of obeying, in substance, as well as in form, the law of their country; and that the rule which forbids the insurance of an enemy's property, not having been founded solely on a regard to

the safety of the underwriter's purse, they have no private right to wave its application.

Some persons, perhaps, may find an excuse or palliation of this practice, to satisfy their own consciences, in a doubt of the public utility of the law which they thus violate or evade; for specious arguments, have been heretofore offered, to prove that a belligerent state, may advantageously permit its subjects to insure the goods of an enemy from capture; and that pestilent moral heresy, the bane of our age, which resolves every duty into expediency, may possibly have its proselytes at Lloyd's, as well as at Paris. With such men as have imbibed this most pernicious error, I have not time to reason on their own false principles; though the notion that it is politic to insure an enemy, against our own hostilities, is demonstrably erroneous; and seems as strange a paradox as any that the vain predilection for oblique discovery ever suggested. I can only offer to them a short argument, which ought to be decisive, by observing, that the wisdom of the legislature, and of our ablest statesmen in general, has concluded against these insurances on political grounds; otherwise they would have been permitted, instead of being, as they are, prohibited by law *.

* The prohibition of the last war, 33 George III. cap. 27. s. 4, has not, I believe, yet been renewed. Perhaps, during

But I conjure the British underwriters to reflect, that there is a wide difference, both political and moral, between the insurance of an enemy's property fairly passing on the seas as such, in his own name; and the insurance of the same property under a fraudulent neutral disguise. By the former transaction, indeed, the law is more openly violated; but in the latter, the law-breaking and clandestine contract, is, in effect, a conspiracy of the underwriter with the enemy and his agents, to cheat our gallant and meritorious fellow subjects, the naval captors; as well as to frustrate the best hopes of our country, in the present very arduous contest.

Besides, by what means is the safety of the underwriters in these secret contracts consulted! It will not, it cannot, be denied, that instead of the paltry considerations for which they now consent to release the warranty of neutrality, they

the pressure of parliamentary business, which has prevailed ever since the commencement of the present war, it has escaped the attention of government. The illegality of in. suring hostile property, stands, however, on common law principles, independent of any positive statute; as has long since been solemnly decided. The use of that act was not to invalidate the policy, but to impose specific penalties on the insurer of an enemy's goods; and if it should be revived, the indirect method of accomplishing the illegal ob ject by a secret undertaking, will, I trust, be made at least equally penal with the direct and open offence.

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would require more than double the open premium for that release, if they did not rely on the effect of those perjuries and forgeries by which capture or condemnation is avoided. The underwriter, therefore, who enters into the clandestine compact, is an accessary to those crimes.

But is this all? Does he not directly contract for, and suborn, as well as abet them? For whose benefit, and at whose instigation, are those false affidavits, and fictitious documents, transmitted from the neutral country, which are laid before the courts of prize in these cases, as evidence of the property, after a decree for further proofs? The claimant receives the sum insured from the underwriter, and allows the latter to prosecute the claim for his own reimburseeviment; and for that purpose the necessary dence is furnished by the one, and made use of by the other, to support at Doctor's Commons the fact of a representation, which at Lloyd's Coffee House is known to be false.

It may indeed, be alleged, that there are often other reasons with the assured, for asking the underwriter to wave the question of neutral property, than a consciousness that the goods belong in fact to an enemy. Courts, it may be said, are liable to be mistaken on that point; and the delay attending its investigation, may be injurious. Pretences like these can never be wanting, to