Suspends the Navigation Laws, January 1847. This measure in itself afforded much additional employment to shipping; and in the course of the debate upon it, Lord John Russell made the memorable declaration that he "did not propose in any respect to alter the existing Navigation Laws."[1] He was, however, obliged immediately afterwards to suspend the operation of these Laws till the 1st September following, so as to facilitate the importation of grain and flour. Indeed, some such measure was absolutely necessary, as the crops of Germany and France had in many instances failed, and the French Government had also been compelled to suspend for a time their Navigation Laws, in order to obtain supplies of food from other countries.
As the necessity of increasing, at all events for a limited period, the facilities for importing grain from foreign countries and the admission of sugar more freely into breweries and distilleries, so as to augment the supply of food, had been pointed out in the Royal Speech, no opposition was offered to this temporary suspension of the Navigation Laws; but it was
- ↑ I daresay at that time Lord Russell had not studied the question sufficiently. I arrive at this conclusion from a note I received from his Lordship in the present year (1875), in which he says, referring to the repeal of the Navigation Laws:—"I felt convinced by the reasoning of all writers, of whom the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcote, was one of the most able, that the Navigation Laws ought to be repealed. I was not frightened by Lord Derby's sinister predictions, and events have proved me right." Sir Stafford Northcote at the time was, I think, private secretary to Mr. Labouchere, the President of the Board of Trade under Lord John Russell's Administration, and it is curious to learn that his Lordship, then the Prime Minister and leader of the great Whig party, should have been made a convert to the necessity of further progress by the young Conservative. Of course these writings could not have been read by Lord Russell at the time when he made the "declaration" to which I refer in the text.
