The Sun.
London, England, 1849-03-13 00:00:00

analogy between the Act of 1846 and the measures le--
fore the House. We were always proud of our ships,
colonies, and commerce. Novi it was felt that our ships i
were useless, that. our colonic:, eere cumbrous, and thst
our trade ought to be left open to competition with the
trade of all the, world. Oar cotnint,reial marine and our
navy were inseparably united. They must stand or fall
together, and he con:ended that this mete uro was calcu-
lated to injure both one end the other. Honourable
Gentlemen depended very much last year upon the evi•
dente given by Sir James Stirling, but they did not do
so now. He would, in answer to these arguments, how-
ever, refer to the evidence of Sir Byam Martin, who had
expressed a strong opinion against the policy of inter-
fering with our navigation laws.
Mr. DRUM NIOND promised the Hon. Member for
Stoke that in the remarks be was about to make he
would not make use of any of those arguments which
he had described as having been long interred in past
debates; but he would take the liberty of examining
into the truth of the position whether the naval and mi-
litary officers of the country were men whose opinions
were not to be attended to when the he nour and safety
of the country were concerned.—(Hear.) But, before
he proceeded to that part of the subject, he must say
that when the Right Hon. Gentleman the Member fur
the University of Oxford complained of the want of
unanimity among the members of the Government, he
might have afforded them a better example thin by
giving an argument on one side of the question and a
vote on the other.— (Hear, hear.) He must agree that
much of the debate on this question bad been not so
much on the principle as on the details of the Bill; but
at the same time he must say there was this excuse for
Hon. Members—that the principle of the Bill was no-
where to be found in it.—(Laughter.) The Bill in its
first words said that it was a Bill to amend certain
things; and the way in which it proposed to amend their
was by abrogating them. Now, he must say that was
the most extraordinary way of mending he had
ever heard of.—(Hear, hear.) It might be all very
right and proper to alter eighteen statutes of Parlia-
ment, but he could not consider that question in the
present stage of the Bill. To find out what was the prin-
ciple of the Bill they must look to the speeches which
had been delivered not only in the legitimate assembly,
but in many assemblies of an illegitimate character. In
all past times the object of every statesman, whatever his
political opinions might have been, was to prevent capi-
tal going out of this country, because if it did our la-
bourers could not be employed. Now, the object of this
Bill—and most ingeniously contrived it had been—was
to keep capital in the country, but still not to employ
our labourers.—(Hear, and a laugh.) The promoters of
it did not send capital away, but they kept it here for the
purpose of employing foreign labourers. They had all
heard of the Satanic school of poetry in literature. If
there was such a thing as a Satanic school in politics,
the authors of this Bill certainly belonged to it.—(Hear,
hear, and a laugh.) It was a very remarkable pheno-
menon that at the present day it seemed the fate of
every statesman, no matter to what party he belonged,
or on what side of the House ho sat, to be doomed to
eat every word he had ever uttered on any one occasion
—(A laugh)—and to go against every principle which
he had ever endeavoured to establish. If, therefore, any
Honourable Gentlemen were at a loss to meet the ar-
guments of the Government and its supporters, they
had-only to go back to the speeches of those very gen-
tlemen, and to appeal from the drunken Philips of the
day to the sober Philips of ten years ago.—(Hear, hear.)
In fact, the best speech against the measure of Earl
Grey was the speech delivered not long ago by Lord
Howick.—(A laugh.) For years past the country had
been under an evil genius. It had been well described
by the Hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Disraeli) as
a fate from which no Minister could liberate himself—it
seemed, as it were, a sort of myth of a force which
bound them down, while Chancellors of the Exchequer
pecked at their livers ad libitum.—(Cheers and laughter.)
The alterations in former days made by Ministers in
our system hail not been carried to any dangerous ex-
tent. The changes introduced by Lord Wallace and
Mr. Huskissen had been wise and prudent. Not so the
conduct of Ministers now. He spoke not of any parti-
cular Government, but of all those who had sat on the
Treasury beeches for many years back. It might be
apparent presumption in him to say so, but one ex-
pression in the Right Hon. Member's (Mr. Glad-
stone's) speech had been worth attending to—that in
which the Right Hon. Member said the evil to
our school was that we did not attend to les-
sons of experience, but dashed boldly into
ways unknown on the faith of theories untried —(Hear,
hear.) He called on them not altogether to disregard
the teaching of the past and the lessons of experience.
The most celebrated statesman of antiquity declared
that " thei.e is in maritime states a corruption and in-
stability of morals, for they import not only merchan-
dise, but morals—so that nothing can remain entire in
the institutions of their country—(Hear, hear)—for they
who inhabit those states do nut remain quiet in their
places, but are hurried away from their homes by an
ever-winged hope of thought; and, even if they remain
bodily, they still run about and wander in spirit; nor
did anything tend more to the destruction of Corinth or
Carthage, long in a declining state, than the vagrancy
and dissipation of their citizens, who, through their
greediness of trade and navigation, relinquished the cul-
ture of their lands and their training to arms."—(Hear,
hear.) He might quote the opinions of Lord Chatham
and of Mr. Canning to a similar effect, and of late days
they had an eminent writer who, in his work on Germany,
speaking of Frankfort, said, that "in consequence of her
commercial relations, she was so thoroughly under fo-
reign influence, and so polluted by a mixture of all foreign
manners, that her population could be hardly said to
have a character of their own." What had fitted them to
be citizens of the world had unfitted them to be citizens
of the country to which they belonged, for " they judged
of the happiness of mankind by the rate of exchange.
(Cheers and laughter.) Now, all that was applicable to
the Manchester school. The grand fault of these gentle-
men was that they could not form a conception how any-
thing which was not good for cotton-spinning could be
good for anything else.—(Renewed laughter.) " But, '
said the same writer, " let no one blame them for for-
getting, in the pursuits of the money speculator and
merchant, the interest of their country, or at least before
doing so let him visit the ports of London, Liverpool, or
Bristol, and discover—if he can—a purer foundation for
Eaglish patriotism."—(Hear, hear.) But he had one
more authority for Hon. Gentlemen opposite—their
darling Adam Smith. The only quarrel he (Mr. Drum-
mond) had with Hon. Gentlemen with respect to Adam
Smith was that they never would read beyond one page
of him.— (A laugh.) Let them attend to this:—" As
their (the manufacturers') thoughts, however, are com-
monly exercised rather about the interests of their parti-
cular branch of business than about that of society, their
judgment, even when given with the greatest candour
(which it has not been on every occasion), is much more
to be depended upon on the former than on the latter. The
interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trade
or manufacture is always in some respects different from
or even opposite to that of the public."—(Hear, hear )
Yet it was for such men as these that the Legislature
bad acted for many years back, and acted still. The
manufacturer sent to Africa for his cotton, grown by the
African labourer; having employed the African la-
bourer and shipowner, he would take it home and spin
it into cotton—then it was put on board a French vessel
and exchanged for French silks or wines, to that from
beginning to end not one English labourer would be em-
ployed.—(lronical cheers from the Ministerial benches.)
When the poet, glowing with a fine enthusiasm, ex-
claims : _ _ _

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself bath said,
* •
This is my own, my native land ?"
" Oh, yes," says the Hon. Gentleman opposite, " at
Manchester there are a thousand of them."—(Cheers
and laughter.) Not content (continued the Hon.
Gentleman) with resorting to bribery to get up accu-
sations against your sailors—not satisfied with assailing
them and your naval officers with taunts, y, a now say we
have a" superstitious reverence" for the navy. It may be
true we have a supertitious reverence for that gallant ser-
vice. It may remain among us yet. lime was when we had
a veneration for it, There was indeed a time when we
had a national faith—when we venerated, ay, ',wor-
shipped, if you like, the statesmen who guided the des-
tinies of this country—when we respected the magis-
trates who administered her laws, and admired the sea-
men and soldiers who devoted their lives to her service
—a time when our national creed was " Rule Britannia,"
and the finest anthem in our ritual was " God save the
Queen."—(Cheers.)
Mr. LABOUCHERE could assure the Hon. Gentle-
man, that if he was not firmly persuaded British in-
terests, and especially the British mercantile marine,
would be promoted by this measure, and that it could
not be supported on British grounds, he (Mr. Labou-
chere) would not be found amongst its advocates. The
only question before the House at present was the
principle of the measure. He had never attempted to
conceal its magnitude, or to disguise that it was, in fact,
the virtual abandonment of the system of restrictions on
the navigation of this country, and he would not ask for
the vote of any Hon. Gentleman who was not prepared
to consider the propriety of that course.—(Hear, hear.)
There were undoubtedly details of the utmost conse-
quence, such as the manning and registry of vessels,
connected with this principle, but they shouldbe reserved
for the House in Committee, whea he hoped they would
receive the most attentive consideration. He had paid
the greatest attention to those details, however; but,
nevertheless, would repeat the assurances he had already
given, that he had not the presumption to suppose im-
portant suggestions might not be made by individual
Members of the House with respect to those details,
and while he would adhere rigidly to the principle of
the Bill, he would be perfectly ready to receive any sug-
gestions. The restrictions which had been imposed for
the advantage of our shipping were of three kinds—on
the colonial trade, on the carrying trade, and on the
long voyage trade. From the best consideration ho
could give the subject, he was satisfied the time had ar-
rived when it was necessary, for the sake of our com-
mercial interests, to examine those restrictions—not
merely to modify them, but to see if.they had not been
fraught with the greatest possible amount of evil, lie
had been greatly surprised at the way in which the
Right Hon. Member for Stamford (Mr. ferries) had
treated the demands of the colonies for a relaxation of those
laws. Those demands were not a priori surprising, for the
restrictions had been reluctantly submitted t? at a time
when differential duties and protective principles in
favour of colonial produce were in operation. The.
-flight Honourable Gentleman dealt very lightly with
.-the case of Canada, whilst he had relied very much
on the solitary instance in which any body of thein-
habitants had opposed the repeal of the navigation-laws;
for in all the other instances to which he had referred,
the petitions had been to restore protection. The Right
Hon. Gentleman said nothing of the sentiments of the
Canadian Legislature, who had urged on this country
the necessity of departing from the navigation-laws by a
majority of 49 to 19. As to Lord Elgin's statement,
that making Montreal a free port would meet the com-
plaints of the Canadians, it wag) made at a time when the