her our coasting trade, and we are entitled, not merely in policy but in justice, to ask her for her coasting trade. But let us give her the colonial trade without the coasting trade, and we give her the valuable boon, while we withhold the worthless; but we cannot say to her, 'Give us all, for we have given you all.'" Mr. Gladstone relied on the sincerity of the American diplomatist, and therefore, urged this point as one of the highest importance, Mr. Bancroft's offer appearing to him a forcible argument for including the coasting trade in any future arrangement. In conclusion, he expressed the hope that when England and America had concurred in setting an example to the world of free navigation, other nations would be induced to imitate it by a moral force it would be difficult to resist; and that we should live to see the ocean, that great highway of nations, as free as the ships that traverse its bosom, or the winds that blow over it.
Though Mr. Gladstone would have preferred securing such reciprocal privileges as other nations had power to confer before throwing open our ports to their ships, his speech was in effect a splendid declamation in favour of Free-trade principles, as applied to navigation; and his argument pointed to the conclusion that, even if other nations were not prepared for reciprocity, it would still be for the interests of Great Britain to repeal her restrictive laws.
Mr. Hudson. Mr. Hudson, as the representative of Sunderland, apart from his own Conservative principles, made an earnest appeal to the House against Free-trade in navigation, and hoped it would not be led away by any fanc ful notions. Captain Berkeley, on the other
