Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/222

 Lords should, from the evidence taken before them, resolve on the maintenance of those laws and on the rejection of the Government measure, such a course might occasion embarrassment. He complained that while the British shipowner would be exposed to foreign competition by the removal of all protection, the heavy burden of being required to man his ship agreeably with the rules of the Navigation Laws was still retained. Criticising in succession the various pleas in behalf of Prussia, America, and our West Indian Colonies, for the repeal or modification of the present code, he remarked that Prussia had nothing to give us in return for the concessions she sought, and that her warnings and threats of withdrawing such advantages as she had already conceded were of trivial moment. America, in the most friendly way, no doubt, requested to participate in our foreign and colonial trade, in return for reciprocal concessions to be made to us: but America had no colonies; and it was wholly out of her power to give us any equivalent for the advantages she would be sure to acquire by the abolition of our Navigation Laws. "Why did not 'free' America," he exclaimed, "show us an example, and abolish her laws, which were quite as stringent as ours?"

As to the West Indies, Mr. Herries gave many details in proof of his assertion that the petition against the Navigation Laws from the Jamaica House of Assembly but imperfectly represented the real sentiments of either that body or of the island at large. Had its promoters been aware that, by the abrogation of these laws, freights from the foreign