Mr. Gladstone's scheme
This was, perhaps, the last chance offered to the
Shipowners: they, however, relied upon throwing
out the Bill, and rejected every offer at modification,
or conditional relaxation of the existing law, their
aim being to uphold those laws in their integrity.
Mr. Gladstone's views, on the other hand, favoured
the adoption of conditional legislation, but not exactly
in the way proposed by Mr. Bouverie. He
proposed to divide the whole trade of the empire
into two divisions only: the first of them relating to
domestic or British trade; including under that head
the trade coastwise and the colonial trade. He proposed
to enact a law, not dependent on the discretion
of the ministers of the Crown, otherwise than that it
would be their business to ascertain when any country
was disposed to give Great Britain perfect freedom
in its foreign trade, and to provide in such a case
that it should receive in return her foreign trade.
Whenever any nation would propose perfect freedom
in all maritime trade, both foreign and domestic, it
would be placed on equal terms with British vessels
in all ports, foreign, colonial, and coasting. Mr.
Gladstone, however, contemplated a provision for
the foreign trade of the colonies by dealing with
that trade irrespectively of the conduct of other
countries. He suggested the repeal of every direct
restraint on the importation of tropical produce—or
non-European produce—from Europe, that being a
restraint which, according to the actual law, affected
British ships as well as those of foreign countries.
He was also for the repeal of all fiscal restraints, and
of every restraint of the nature of a tax on the British
Shipowner. He would have set him free, alike with
