Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/419

 10,000l. would have passed as freely as a 5l. note, and whose hale and ruddy countenances did not at all betoken that they were on "the road to ruin." Perhaps it was malicious on the part of the 'Times' to describe the meeting "as the largest collection of political and commercial fossils which could be got together in these adverse days for political antiquarianism;" but it is quite true that their views, generally, so far as they could be comprehended, were certainly of an antiquarian character.

Mr. Frederick Somes, the member for Hull, who moved the first resolution, declared "that nothing but ruin could result to the shipping interest," if the existing policy was pursued; and Mr. Bramley-Moore, who seconded it, stated that "the coasting trade was gradually drifting into the hands of foreigners" (a very extraordinary statement in the face of the official returns), while he argued that, "we should have the right of selling to, as well as purchasing from, the foreigner," as if any person or any law prevented him from doing so if he pleased. Mr. George Marshall, one of our largest and most intelligent shipowners, spoke, from experience, of the depressed state of British shipping, owing to the "inability to compete with foreigners;" and Mr. Duncan Dunbar told the meeting, but not in a doleful tone, for he was the jolliest of men, with the happiest of countenances, "that the very property he had made by his industry and hard labour was melting away like snow before the sun."