Accordingly Lord Hardwicke on the 25th February, pursuant to notice, moved the appointment of a Select Committee of the Lords.[85] Recapitulating in his speech the events of the preceding year, and, dwelling in terms of indignation on the dissimulation which, he said, had been practised, he charged Ministers with having deceived the country; and stigmatised the whole evidence before the Committee of the Commons as one-sided and unfair. He complained that a distinguished officer of the Royal Navy, Sir James Stirling, had given his evidence in favour of the abolition of the Navigation Laws; but that, before he could be cross-examined, the Committee were informed, that the duty of the gallant officer required his absence, and that he had sailed from England. His Lordship then entered into numerous details, pronouncing Mr. Porter’s evidence to be false; he, and the statistical officers of the Board of Trade, “being learned in that description of theory which was so popular now-a-days;” whereby forty-seven vessels of 7101 tons, which had, in 1846, entered inwards from French ports, were converted, by multiplying the number of entries inwards, into 228,186 tons, and by treating the clearances outwards in a similar manner magnified to such an extent that they represented 556,824 tons; while the _Prince Ernest_, a passenger and mail boat, employed between Calais and Dover, of 145 tons, figured in the Custom House returns as 24,215 tons of British shipping![86] [Sidenote: Earl Grey grants a Committee.] Earl Grey, in granting the committee, took care to express an opinion, that no further inquiry was necessary. He defended the course taken by his colleague, Lord Palmerston, contending that no understanding had been come to with the Government of the United States with regard to the repeal of the Navigation Laws, and that the correspondence implied nothing more, than that a mutual relaxation of existing restrictions would be beneficial to the maritime commerce of both countries: he concluded by defending Mr. Porter’s returns, and added, that “their Lordships would find that, on strict examination, the allegations of falseness would vanish altogether.” [Sidenote: Evidence of the Shipowners before the Lords’ Committee.]