Malcolm, James Peller: First Impressions Or Sketches from Art and Nature, Animate and Inanimate (London, 1807)

ROCHESTER,

and partiality {hall suppress and eat out knowledge
and sussiciency in matters so nearly concerning the
service and safety of the kingdom, wherein all
private respects ihould be laid apart, and virtue
truly regarded for itself.
" Secondly, it were not less behovcfull for his
Majesty's service, and for the strength of the
Navy, that no ship should be builded by the
great, as divers of them have been ; for, by daily
experience, they art found to be the most weak,
imperfect, and unserviceable ships of all the rest.
And it is no othcrwise to be presumed, but, as the
officers would be thought to be very frugal for his
Majesty in drawing a bargain by the great, at a
near root with the shipwrightj so likewise the
shipwright, on his part, will be as careful to gain
by his labour, or at least to savc himsclf harmless,
and therefore suit his work ssightly, according to
the slight price out of the which present sparing,
or untimely thrift, there grows many future incon-
veniences, and continual charge, in repairing and
re-edifying such imperfect ssight-built vcssels.
The proof and experience whereof hath been
often found in new ships built at those rates,
but so weakly as that in their voyage they have
been ready to founder in the seas with every ex-
traordinary storm, and at their return been en-
forced to be new built. But seeing the officers
os