Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/199

 Lord Hardwicke as their mouthpiece and champion; and, in order to complete the inquiry commenced by the Lower House in the preceding session, resolved to move the appointment of a Committee of the Lords to inquire into the policy and operation of the Navigation Laws; the shipowners being sanguine that there, at least, they would be able to make out a satisfactory case, and counteract the one-sided evidence they conceived had been given by the repeal party before the Committee of the Commons.

Accordingly Lord Hardwicke on the 25th February, pursuant to notice, moved the appointment of a Select Committee of the Lords. Recapitulating in his speech the events of the preceding year, and, dwelling in terms of indignation on the dissimulation which, he said, had been practised, he charged Ministers with having deceived the country; and stigmatised the whole evidence before the Committee of the Commons as one-sided and unfair. He complained that a distinguished officer of the Royal Navy, Sir James Stirling, had given his evidence in favour of the abolition of the Navigation Laws; but that, before he could be cross-examined, the Committee were informed, that the duty of the gallant officer required his absence, and that he had sailed from England. His Lordship then entered into numerous details, pronouncing Mr. Porter's evidence to be false; he, and the statistical officers of the Board of Trade, "being learned in that description of theory which was so popular now-a-days;" whereby forty-seven vessels of 7101 tons, which had, in 1846, entered inwards from French ports, were converted, by multiplying the