which I saw was altogether hopeless, to at least enter my protest as a British Shipowner against such subservient and worthless appeals to the Legislature of our country. My appearance on the front row was the signal for a yell of derision; and my amendment, which I had hastily written in pencil, "that a petition be presented to both Houses of Parliament, praying for an inquiry into the actual condition of British navigation, and for relief from all peculiar burdens and restrictions that still fetter maritime enterprise," was received with hisses and the loudest and rudest demonstrations of dissatisfaction.
Although these events are matters for history, they are of too personal a character to be pursued at length; however, that my readers may form some idea of the feelings of a very large number of the most influential Shipowners of the period, I furnish in a foot-note[1] extracts from the report which appeared in*
- ↑ "Had I," continued Mr. Lindsay, "remained a silent spectator at this meeting as I intended, I should have been an assenting party to a resolution which asks us to reverse our policy. ('No, no!') But such would have been the case, for the resolution says, 'that the principal cause of the depression has been the impolicy of the existing system of maritime commerce.' I hold that the establishment of a Free-trade policy has nothing whatever to do with the existing depression in the shipping interest (cries of 'Oh, oh!' and great disapprobation), and therefore I come forward and offer my dissent. This resolution, further, asks us to confirm a memorial which the Shipowners' Society of London, this time last year, addressed to her Majesty. I, for one, cannot be a consenting party to that resolution or memorial, because I believe that the opinions therein expressed are fallacious, and I shall endeavour to show you how. What is the prayer of that memorial? It urgently entreats, indeed implores her Majesty to issue an Order in Council against those nations which have not reciprocated with us. ('Bravo!' and cheers.) I am in favour of reciprocity—it is Free-trade in its most extended sense—but I ask you to look at the difference between reciprocity and the enforcement of reciprocity by the Legislature. Enforced reciprocity, as prayed for by you in this memorial, is Pro-*
