In this controversy, the important cities of Manchester and Liverpool each took also a very different view. The great Free-traders of the former desired the unconditional repeal of the Navigation Laws, feeling convinced that their cotton and corn would then be brought to them at cheaper rates, and that they would be able to deliver to much greater advantage in distant markets the products of their manufacturers; but the shipowners of Liverpool, almost as a body (though there were a few important exceptions), were exceedingly adverse to any material change in these laws, as they regarded with great and natural jealousy the then triumphant progress of American shipping. FOOTNOTES: [55] I give this clause at length, because it is about the first step towards a change in our Navigation Laws, which had become necessary to render them practicable, after steam had been introduced for the propulsion of our ships. This mighty instrument of civilisation, about which I shall have a great deal to say hereafter, drove itself through numerous Acts of Parliament, and showed how vain were legislative measures when opposed to the progress of science. [56] The Zollverein States are, Prussia at the head: Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Kothen, Baden, Bavaria, Brunswick, Frankfort, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Homburg, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Lippe-Detmold, Luxemburg with Limburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Nassau, Oldenburg and Kniphausen, Reuss (Old line), Reuss (New line), Saxony, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Weimar, Eisenach, Schwarzburg, Rudolfstadt-Schwarzburg, Sonderhausen, Waldeck, Wurtemburg. The Zollverein embraces an area of 131,615 geographical square miles, with a population of 28½ millions, being 63·08 per cent. of the whole area of Germany as it then existed, and 64·35 per cent. of its population. The several States entered voluntarily into the regulation. [57] An exception existed for a person who resided abroad in a foreign factory. [58] The opinion of the Attorney- and the Solicitor-General were taken upon the point, and they admitted the article for consumption. [59] Merchants were sometimes, however, misled. An American, who had a smart U.S. brig, once showed a friend of mine his invoice of a cargo of Peruvian cotton, which had reached Gibraltar from Peru. Counting his profits on a sale in England, where he had ordered her to come, he was wofully disappointed when told of the unlucky _third section_, which forbade its importation. The fortune he had counted upon realising melted away at once. [60] Mr. Burton of Montreal, a merchant of great experience, gave it in evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons of 1844 that the difference of rates were as follows:—