The next great change was made in the year 1821, when the reciprocity system was introduced by Mr Huskisson. This subject has acquired great importance now, from the avowed intention on the part of government, scarcely disguised in the opening speech of this session of Parliament, to follow up the labours of the committee which made such laborious inquiries last session, by a bill for the total abolition of the Navigation Laws. We shall not enlarge on this subject, the vastness and importance of which would require a separate paper. Suffice it to say, therefore, that here too, experience has decisively warned us of the pernicious tendency of the path on which we have entered, and of the truth of Adam Smith's remark, that "though some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity, they _are all as wise as if dictated by the most deliberate wisdom_. As defence is of much more importance than opulence, the act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."[1] It appears from the parliamentary tables compiled by Mr Porter, that, while the British tonnage with the Baltic powers had increased from 1801 to 1821, under the protective system, to a very considerable degree, theirs with us had declined during the same period; under the reciprocity system, our tonnage with them had on the whole decreased to _a third_ of its former amount, while their shipping with us had, during the same period, quadrupled.[2] It further appears, from the same tables, that the great increase which has taken place during the same period, has arisen from the prodigious growth of our colonial trade, or increase of the countries with whom we had concluded _no_ reciprocity treaties, but left them on the footing of the protection of the old Navigation Laws. And though the profits of shipping of all sorts have received a vast addition, from the enormous importations consequent upon Sir R. Peel's free-trade measures, yet the returns of these years prove that the greater part of this increase has accrued to foreign states and powers, which may at any time turn the maritime resources thus acquired against ourselves. Suffice it to say, as an example of this truth, that of the ships which, in 1846, imported four million nine hundred thousand quarters of corn into the British harbours, no less than three-fourths were foreign vessels, and only one-fourth British. Nevertheless, so insensible are political fanatics to the most decisive facts, when they militate against their favourite theories, that it is in the full knowledge of these facts that government are understood to be prepared to introduce, even in this session of parliament, a measure for the abolition, or at least the essential abrogation, of the Navigation Laws.