310 Proposal for Highway and Marine Cottages. 
power and influence, has similar claims 
on the feelings of private benevolence, 
and others of a public nature peculiar to 
itself, 
I propose to surround the shores of 
the United Kingdom with marine cot- 
tages, at intervals of a mile, to serve 
as beacons on certain occasions, and 
the especial business of whose inhabi- 
tants it should be to superintend.the in- 
cidents passing on the ocean, and to 
afford relief, advice, and shelter, to ship- 
wrecked or distressed mariners. 
Persons who have been at sea, must 
have been sensible of the inhospitable 
aspect of our shores; and could never 
suspect, if they had made the English 
coast for the first time, that such acountry 
contained a numerous and active popula- 
tion. Our whole coast exhibits a dreary 
continuation of rock or cliff, without 
asylum or friendly invitation, and un- 
provided with watch or guard for its 
own protection, or the support and secu- 
rity of the strangers or mariners who 
approach it. Thus unprovided with any 
means of hospitality, who could suspect 
that such was the coast of the most ina- 
ritime people in the world ; or that thou- 
sands of lives, and millions of property, 
were every year sacrificed by wrecks, 
which might, in a considerable degree, 
be prevented or averted by means like 
those proposed? 
This plan presents also the advantage 
of providing, in a characteristic and con- 
genial mammer, for five or six thousand 
maimed or superannuated seasten and 
marines, two of whom, with or without 
familtes, might occupy each cottage, 
keeping a constant look out, in all wea- 
ther in which assistance might be wanted. 
Each cottage should be provided witha 
jantern in its roof, in which a good light 
should by night be constantly displayed, 
and with ropes, a signal gun, and other 
means of affording and producing assist- 
ance in case of wreck. 
- Benevolence will ask for no reasons be- 
yond those which cannot fail to present 
themselves on the slightest consideration, 
for-the adoption of a plan so obviously 
useful; however, as it can only be car- 
ried into execution through the in- 
fluence of a patriotic minister, of by 
parliamentasy sanction, it may not be 
" improper to subjoin some of the reasons 
which strongly recommend it. 
4. Such a continuity of lights indica. 
ting the direction of every line of coast, 
could not fail to be the means of prevent- 
[May i; 
ing numerous wrecks, and saving many 
valuable lives, and an amount of property, 
equal perhaps in a single year to the 
expence of building all the cottages. 
2. In cases of unavoidable wreck, the 
instantaneous assistance afforded by the 
inhabitants of all the adjacent cottages, 
could not fail to be the means of saving 
many of the crew; and much of the pro- 
perty. 7 
3. A stop would thus be put to the 
system of plundering wrecks, a practice 
which prevails in many parts of our coast, 
and which sinks us in character, as a 
people, below the most barbarous na- 
tions. 
4. These marine cottages would serve 
as signal-houses for many public pur- 
poses, and they might especially be made 
a meansof preventing illicit trade. 
5. They would cheaply and usefully 
provide for five or six thousand seamen 
and marines, as out-pensioners of Green- 
wich, or as a separate establishment ; and 
at the close of the war, same means of 
providing for this extra number will be 
wanted. . . 
6. The families of the married cotta- 
gers would be universally a nursery of 
seamen; and indeed it mght not be im- 
practicable to register the.entire male. 
part of them as future resources for the 
navy, in which they might be marked as 
objects for promotion in the inferior ranks 
of the service. 
Some objections may probably he 
started to particular features of both these. 
plans: I entertain, however, no doubt, 
that these might be removed, ona full 
investigation; and they must be of trifling 
consequence, when placed in competition 
with the vast benefits that would result, 
in a public and private view, from such 
establishments. I am indeed sanguine 
enough to think, that they would in many 
important respects give a new feature to 
the moral character of the country ; and 
that at least, instead of solitary roads and 
desolate coasts, we should have the gra- 
tification af seeing twenty thousand cot~ 
tages, and the consequent happiness 
and comfort attending perhaps a hundred 
thousand souls, now the most miserable 
and destitute members of the commus 
nity. 
At any rate, would not the adoption of 
both plans atone, in some degree, for 
the miseries occasioned by so many years 
spent in unprofitable and destructive 
wars? - 
Common Sense. 
ADVICE, 
