Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/421

 which I saw was altogether hopeless, to at least enter my protest as a British Shipowner against such subservient and worthless appeals to the Legislature of our country. My appearance on the front row was the signal for a yell of derision; and my amendment, which I had hastily written in pencil, "that a petition be presented to both Houses of Parliament, praying for an inquiry into the actual condition of British navigation, and for relief from all peculiar burdens and restrictions that still fetter maritime enterprise," was received with hisses and the loudest and rudest demonstrations of dissatisfaction.

Although these events are matters for history, they are of too personal a character to be pursued at length; however, that my readers may form some idea of the feelings of a very large number of the most influential Shipowners of the period, I furnish in a foot-note extracts from the report which appeared in*