- dressed to the constituencies of the United Kingdom
at the general election in the spring of 1859.[1]
Further returns of the Board of Trade,
and address of the Shipowners' Society to the electors, April 13, 1859.
The returns in question consisted of five statements,
including the period from 1834 to 1858.
They are too voluminous to be given here, but it was
clear from them that, if the increase of the entrances
and clearances of British ships at the ports
of the United Kingdom, since the repeal of the
Navigation Laws, had been 3,221,767, the increase
of foreign ships on the other hand amounted to
5,083,826 tons. To these leading facts, the Shipowners'
Association, triumphantly, referred the different
constituencies, and, although British ships in
the eight years over which these returns extended,
had increased to a far greater extent than they had
in any similar previous period, the Association
pointed to the still greater increase of foreign shipping,
and implored the electors of the leading maritime
ports to send such representatives to the new
Parliament, who would be exponents of the opinions
they sought to perpetuate; and who would save British
Shipowners from the certain ruin in their opinion
awaiting them, as was so clearly demonstrated by the
"appalling" number of foreign ships frequenting
our ports. Pertinaciously adhering in this celebrated
manifesto to their extreme Protectionist principles,
they now reasserted with confidence, and with a brazen
front the more astonishing, after what they had previously
admitted, every doctrine that had proved
to be fallacious, every "fact" which had long since
been shown to have had its origin in the regions of
- ↑ An Address of Shipowners to the Electors of the United Kingdom, 13th April, 1859.
