Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/168

 Mr. Porter did not fail to hold out the threat that Prussia, at the head of the Zollverein States of Germany, would still further carry out its restrictive principles, and impose differential duties on foreign shipping; and that Hamburg and Bremen were, at that time, deliberating whether they should join the Zollverein under one flag, as far as concerned shipping. He, nevertheless, expressed the most sanguine hopes that, when foreign nations discovered beyond all doubt, that England was advancing in the path of Free-trade, they would gladly follow her example, and that commerce throughout the whole of Europe and the world would be unshackled.

It appeared, further, from his evidence, that Mr. Porter was for a complete abrogation of the English Navigation Laws, without any reservations as to reciprocity, and that, from the general conviction that these restrictive laws were rather injurious than beneficial to us, independently of the policy of other nations.

It cannot, however, be said that, in 1847, the repeal party had succeeded in convincing the majority of even the Committee of the soundness of their opinions. The shipowners, as a body, endeavoured to controvert, and with considerable show of success for the time, the theories propounded by the Free-trade party, so strenuously supported by the officers of the Board of Trade. The cold imperturbable evidence of Mr. (now Sir) John Shaw Lefevre, who was intimately connected with the Free-trade party, contrasted strikingly with the impetuosity of such men as Mr. Macgregor, and even with the testimony of Mr. Porter.