Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/335

 for six ships could be obtained for 44l. 5s. 6d. One agent is reported to have paid no less than 3,952l. 7s. 6d. in the course of a year for licences alone.

Sometimes, however, they were estimated at an even extravagant value. Mr. A. Baring said, in the course of a debate in Parliament on the subject, that he would have given 15,000l. for one of the licences issued, which, owing to a clerical error in the substitution of one word for another, became of that marketable value. No wonder that the merchants importuned the government for these licences, when they not only served as a protection to their property, but might, by a lucky error, become the means of making a man's fortune. In this point of view the licences were wholly and entirely unjustifiable. It seems further that where applications were made, a considerable amount of control and interference were exercised in framing them before they were granted. Mr. Brougham drew a picture of the President and Vice-President of the Board of Trade laying their heads together, and passing a whole morning in determining with the utmost gravity "whether one cargo should consist of cotton or of wool, whether scissors should be added, whether nails should be added to the scissors; whether the nails or the scissors should be left out, or whether the commerce of the country might or might not be ruined by throwing in a little hemp with the nails and the scissors to make up the cargo." But this was not all.