Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/611

 From the regulations of your service, your Memorialists were alone eligible to stations in the Company's regular ships, while in the general Commercial Navy of the country, they have not even a fair prospect of competing with others; they have not only lost a profession in which they had graduated, and in which they had expected to find a provision for life, but they have lost a connection by which their interest in that profession would have been insured. This is the ground of your Memorialists' present claim. All the service sustain the loss of profession and connection, and it is in respect of this loss that they ask for compensation.

Your Memorialists state this the more prominently, because they have heard it proposed that compensation should be limited to such Officers as could show an engagement for future employment; but your Memorialists conceive that this is an unsound principle. The Honorable Company established a service with a view to insure a succession of Officers for their employ. There are not now Officers more than sufficient for the supply of the average number of ships employed by your Honorable Company; it is obvious, therefore, that these Officers had a reasonable and just ground to expect, and would have found, employ in the service of the Company but for the Act of last session, which has suddenly destroyed this prospect. Many cases exist, in which, from illness and other temporary causes, Officers were not at the moment of the closing of the Company's trade in active service, though they might, and probably would, have resumed it; and your Memorialists conceive that all are entitled to compensation who have not absolutely resigned or been dismissed from the Company's service. If it should be determined to draw a line, to exclude those who have discontinued the service for a certain period, there must be cases of exemption, otherwise the most meritorious Officers would be excluded: but your Memorialists are satisfied, that the attempt to restrict compensation to those who were in actual service, or about immediately to resume it, would be in its operation partial and unjust, and would not afford relief commensurate with the injury. Your Memorialists cannot too strongly press upon the consideration of the Court the fact, that as the number of Commanders and Officers is not excessive, all had a reasonable expectation of employment of which they are altogether deprived, and yet few might be able to show any actual contract for employment, particularly having regard to the temporary system adopted by the Company in the