IMPRESSION for the naval service, by the king's commission, has been a matter of much dispute, and submitted to with great reluctance; though Sir Michael Foster strenuously contends that the practice of impressing, and granting powers to the admiralty for that purpose, is of a very ancient date, and has been uniformly continued by a regular series of precedents to the present time, from which he concludes that it is part of the common law. The difficulty arises from the fact that no statute has expressly declared this power to be in the crown, though many of them very strongly imply it. But whatever may be said as to the legality of this method of manning the navy, there can be no doubt that it is a gross invasion of natural liberty; and hence it has in recent times been very generally reprobated, not only as forming a great anomaly in a free country, where natural rights are in all other cases respected, but likewise as contrary to sound policy, and at variance with the principles on which recruitment ought to be conducted, excepting in those cases of imperious necessity which imply the suspension of all ordinary rights and laws.