Reasons for granting letters of mart to trading ships humbly offered to the honourable House of Commons. 1695 Approx. 3 KB of XML-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-IV TIFF page image. Text Creation Partnership, Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) : 2008-09 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1). A92227 Wing R496A ESTC R226277 36273455 ocm 36273455 150190 This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal . The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Early English books online. (EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A92227) Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 150190) Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 2236:6) Reasons for granting letters of mart to trading ships humbly offered to the honourable House of Commons. England and Wales. Parliament. House of Commons. 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n., [London? : 1695?] Place and date of printing from Wing (2nd ed.). Reproduction of original in the British Library. Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford. Re-processed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. Gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. 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Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements). Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site . eng Privateering -- Great Britain -- Early works to 1800. Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- France -- Early works to 1800. France -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain -- Early works to 1800. Broadsides -- London (England) -- 17th century. 2007-07 TCP Assigned for keying and markup 2007-07 Aptara Keyed and coded from ProQuest page images 2007-08 Mona Logarbo Sampled and proofread 2007-08 Mona Logarbo Text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs Batch review (QC) and XML conversion REASONS For Granting Letters of Mart to Trading Ships . Humbly offered to the honourable House of Commons . THAT the French King forces his Subjects Merchant Ships to take Commissions instead of denying them , and Spain and Holland grant them freely ; being of Opinion , That they are serviceable to themselves and Allies , and hurtful to none except their Enemies . That the French Letter of Mart Ships have done us more damage in our Trade than their Men of War ; and such of our Merchant Ships and Gallies that have been so lucky to obtain Commissions , have done very good Service , by taking in the Mediterranean only many rich Prizes from the French , to the Value of at least One hundred thousand Pounds within these last Six Months . That upon the Incouragement of having Letters of Mart , which were not denied till lately , the Merchants have built many very fine Frigats and Gallies , the better to annoy the Enemy , and secure their own Trade , which was before in a great measure lost in several Places , and now thereby partly regain'd ; but should not the Commissions already granted , which are expired or expiring ( for they last but for one Voyage , which is also esteemed hard ) be removed , and new Ones granted to the Frigats and Gallies lately built , it will be a great Hinderance to their hopeful way of recovering our Trade , and also a Discouragement to the Merchants and Marriners . That in regard Merchant Ships of all other Nations in War have Commissions , our Commanders and Sea-men are unwilling to go to Sea without being upon equal Terms with them : For without Commissions they dare not seize a French Ship , though she falls in their way , for fear of being afterwards retaken by the French , and hanged for Pirates . Besides , Commissions encourage the Men the better to defend their Ships ; For who will fight , when if they should overcome they dare not seize ? That such Ships as have Commissions are obliged to give 1500 or 2000 l. Security to perform their Instructions , and particularly to carry one half of their Compliment Land-men , which raises a great Number of Sea-men for his Majesties Service ; and their Prizes pay considerable Customs and Fifths to the Crown , besides the Gain it brings to the Concerned and Nation in general ; for each Prize is a double Gain to us , in regard the Enemy looses as much as we get . The Objection that hath been made against granting Commissions is , That some of these Commission Ships have committed Irregularities . To which is answered , That there hath been several hundred Commissions granted since the War , and it s believed there never was fewer Irregularities committed by such a great Number of Ships as by those , if any at all . But with submission , suppose One in a Hundred of them have broken their Instructions , ( though we know of none ) it would be severe for all the rest to suffer for their Faults , when they may be so easily punished for it .