The argument, that these laws ought to be abrogated in the interests of the consumer was met by the counter-assertion, that any difference of freight, if such indeed existed, would make no appreciable difference in the price of consumable articles. Even the excessively high freight of 8_s._ per barrel from the United States, which had been paid on an emergency, would, they held, amount to only one halfpenny per pound on the flour, so that when freight was reduced to its usual rate, a very slight increase of value was the consequence. The witnesses against repeal spoke of various other articles[64] in a similar manner, arguing that the reduction would be so small that it could never reach the consumer. [Sidenote: Evidence of Mr. G. F. Young,] Of all the witnesses examined before the Committee, no one was more opposed to the repeal than Mr. George Frederick Young, a shipbuilder and shipowner in the port of London. He was quite as strong a partisan in favour of leaving things as they were as Mr. Ricardo and Mr. Porter were in favour of Free-trade. He would admit no further innovations of any kind, contending, that, even the reciprocity system had been in the highest degree detrimental to the interests of the British shipowners: indeed, he asserted that if the Navigation Laws were repealed, it would be seen that the interests of the merchants would be quite as much compromised as those of shipowners, as it was under the operation of these laws that importations were so largely directed into the emporium of England. He apprehended that this repeal would substitute certain conveniently-located foreign ports as depôts for imported produce for the supply of England, in lieu of British ports. He fortified this opinion by elaborate calculations, showing an enormous difference in the warehousing charges at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hamburg, leading, as he apprehended, to this inevitable conclusion, that a British merchant would find it more to his interest to establish depôts at those places, than to import commodities for the supply of his own country, to be lodged in the St. Katherine or West India Docks, or in other similar establishments.