Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/299

 *fold, or even tenfold, I am willing to extend my licence. But what shall we say of a hundredfold, nay, a hundred-and-fiftyfold, and that, not by the lively wit, but by the plodding dealer in returns, tables, and trade and shipping statistics. I must really send them away to bury themselves and their errors in the recesses of the trade department, and no longer hope to obtain any faith here. I have done with such food, such dry food even when it is honestly prepared and fairly served up."

Lord Brougham then entered fully into the merits of the general question, calling upon their Lordships not to part rashly with what had been called the miserable remnants, the fragments of a worn-out system. "Fragments, indeed! They are of gigantic size; they are the splendid remains of a mighty system; they are the pillars of our navy; the props of our maritime defence." He showed that there remained the almost entire monopoly of our home trade, and the perfectly rigorous monopoly of our colonial trade, employing above a million and a half of shipping, and 20,000 seamen, with a capital that gave export and import to between fifteen and sixteen millions sterling in the year. He further insisted that the restrictions affecting Canada could be easily removed without unsettling our whole policy.

The policy of the Navigation Laws rested, in his opinion, on the position that, without such a partial monopoly as they gave to British shipping, we never could maintain a sufficiently ample nursery for our navy, an object of primary importance to every insular empire, and, therefore, to be sought at a