Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/165

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of the Navigation Laws, were the chief witnesses brought forward to make out a case against the existing system. Of these, the first—a distinguished mathematician as well as a lawyer of sound learning—was eminently fitted to work out, calmly and dispassionately, the intricate points connected with the complex system then prevalent. The other two were strong partisans. Mr. Macgregor, a somewhat superficial person, gave the most off-hand answers to questions, though profoundly ignorant of their tendency, therein committing the most egregious blunders, and urging many inaccuracies about the Reciprocity Treaties, their effect on commerce, and the injury Great Britain had sustained through her ancient Navigation Laws. On the question of the maritime relations between this country and the United States, Mr. Macgregor gave evidence, also, at great length, a considerable portion of which was, however, erroneous as to matters of fact, while many of his conclusions were fallacious.

Mr. G. R. Porter, Secretary of the Statistical Department, and well known as entertaining the strongest convictions that the Navigation Laws were as injurious to the shipowners themselves as they had been to the nation, was an industrious hard-working man, but he was at the same time committed by many previous publications to the most extreme opinions on Free-trade: of real practical commerce he had no experience. Mr. Porter had, however, studied the whole question with care, and, while enthusiastic in favour of an entire change, and sanguine with regard to the beneficial results to follow from the repeal of these laws, he gave