- tention of making the Bill operate for a limited
term, so as to ascertain whether Foreign Powers would reciprocate or not. The clause, however, was finally carried without a division; but Clause 22, enabling the Queen to reduce the differential duties in certain cases, opened the wide question of dock dues and light dues, in which public and private rights were so confusedly intermingled that it was ultimately withdrawn. The remaining clauses passed with some opposition, the preamble, however, being agreed to. Thus this celebrated Bill now assumed a formal shape; but its opponents, conscious of their power in the House of Lords, gave notice of a last trial of strength upon the third reading.
On the 19th April, Captain Harris made an ineffectual attempt to carry a clause, on the consideration of the Report, enforcing the apprenticeship laws, and Mr. Gladstone obtained a modification of the Bill with regard to the mode of finally adjusting the intercolonial trade by the colonial legislatures.
Third reading of Bill. During the Easter recess, meetings of the shipping interests had been held in various outports, and the whole power of the Shipowners had been put forth to defeat the Bill. On the 23rd April the Bill stood for the third reading, and the venerable Mr. Herries once more headed the party of Anti-Repealers to make a last effort in the House of Commons to reject the Bill. His speech was well prepared, and suitable to the occasion. He very briefly alluded to the points already decided, but dwelt with great force on the Bancroft letter, asserting that nothing had passed relative to the United States, which ought for a moment to weigh with Parliament, in changing its
