It is sometimes asserted that many men who volunteered did so only to escape impressment.

c. Explain the impressment of sailors by the British.

In 1732 he made a spirited and patriotic effort in Parliament to restore a constitutional militia; and to abolish arbitrary impressment for the sea-service; and, on this subject, he published a pamphlet entitled "The Sailor's Advocate," for which Mr. Sharpe obliged him with a sarcastic preface.

Mr. Oppenheim tells us of an Act of Parliament (17 Charles I) legalising forcible impressment, which seems to have been passed to satisfy the sailors.

That a nation which practiced impressment should imagine that another in which enlistments were voluntary, could possess an advantage of this nature, infers a strong disposition to listen to any means but the right one to account for an unpleasant truth.

This means that it was now seen that impressment, though of little use in obtaining men for the navy, was a very costly arrangement.

I knew that impressment from foreign vessels, out of the waters of Great Britain at least, could be defended on no other ground but that of power; and