a profit to the persons who built them; that, in the long run, there could be no larger amount of profit derived from shipowning than from any other trade, as other persons would, of course, come in to share the profit with the existing shipowners; and that, unless shipping yielded the ordinary rate of profit to be derived from the commerce of the country, deficiencies in shipping from losses would not be, from time to time, supplied. It was well known, he remarked, that the trade of the country had gone on increasing; that, from year to year, more ships had been built; and, further, that, though shipowners had certainly been at times loud in their complaints and fears as to their future prospects, they had still continually added to the amount of their tonnage. Mr. Porter then put in the strongest light the groundless fears they had so long entertained by quoting their Report for 1833,[61] wherein they state that “the long-continued and still existing depression of the shipping interest, the partial production, and great aggravation of distress caused by continual changes in our navigation system; the utter impossibility of the successful maintenance of an unrestricted competition with foreign navigation; the gross injustice of the imposition of peculiar and exclusive burdens on maritime commerce for purposes purely national, while exposed to that competition; the declining quality and estimation of British tonnage; the embarrassment, decay, and ruin of the British shipowner, may now be viewed as incontrovertible positions.” In reply to this desponding statement, Mr. Porter directed attention to the official returns, showing that in 1833 the amount of British tonnage on the register was 2,634,577 tons, whereas in 1846 it was no less than 3,817,112 tons, an increase of 1,182,535 tons. So that, to the melancholy “facts” of the shipowners in 1833, Mr. Porter opposed his prosperous “figures” of 1846. Such discordant views could not by any means be reconciled; but shipowners of all countries and in all ages have ever had the most evil forebodings on the subject of the withdrawal of protection. Mr. Porter did not fail to hold out the threat that Prussia, at the head of the Zollverein States of Germany, would still further carry out its restrictive principles, and impose differential duties on foreign shipping; and that Hamburg and Bremen were, at that time, deliberating whether they should join the Zollverein under one flag, as far as concerned shipping. He, nevertheless, expressed the most sanguine hopes that, when foreign nations discovered beyond all doubt, that England was advancing in the path of Free-trade, they would gladly follow her example, and that commerce throughout the whole of Europe and the world would be unshackled.