Mr. Bayley said: I am well convinced there never entered this door, a Bill fraught with such injustice and cruelty as the present. In order to wreak the revenge of a vindictive ministry on the Americans, you are now going to ruin all the plantations in the West India islands, and to give their present produce up for plunder to your sailors, before the inhabitants can have any notice of your intentions. And by this infamous trick you think you shall be able to man your fleet without giving any bounties to your seamen, which I much doubt if you will find answer after all; yet the attempt is so very base and wicked, that I defy any one to mention such an instance even amongst the most savage nations, where a minister ever dared to give up such a number of innocent people to plunder, without the least crime being laid to their charge. Sir, I have several times told the House, that before the Congress had shut up the American ports, which was the 10th of Sept. last, a great number of their vessels sailed for the West Indies, chiefly in ballast, where the planters are now loading them under the sanction of our Acts of Navigation, never suspecting that we are this day capable of making a law which is to entrap them, by enacting, that unless American vessels came to them loaded with lumber or provisions, and obtained a certificate of it to bring with them to Great Britain or Ireland, with a particular description of their cargoes then on board, that the planter's property was to be seized and made lawful prize of, although they could not possibly know of any such stipulations; therefore, Sir, I frequently urged how unjust it would be, not to give the inhabitants of those islands timely notice of your design before you subjected their goods to forfeiture. I now again, Sir, have a clause in my hand to offer for this purpose, and if it be not accepted, all mankind will agree in seeing the intention of this Bill in the same light that I do. But, Sir, the noble lord at the head of the Treasury insinuates, that no injury is meant by this Billto any of the proprietors of West India estates: if that was really the case, his lordship could have no objection to such a clause; but what serves to convince me more than any bare profession is, that no one will accept the 1,000 guineas I have declared myself ready to give, to whoever will indemnify my property that is now at sea from being seized, until I can send information to my managers in Jamaica to forbear shipping any more on American vessels. Sir, I think it an infamous robbery to have my property taken from me without having infringed any law whatever, and without giving me time to guard against such laws as you are making. Although the loss I may sustain on this occasion may not much effect me, I know many of the inhabitants of the West India islands will be ruined by it, having the greatest part of what they are worth in the world on board American ships now on their passage to this kingdom, and which is now out of their power to remedy. And notwithstanding they are insured against the risk of the seas, and even pirates, yet I am sorry to say that after escaping all these, their ruin is inevitable, from rapacious and unprincipled ministers.