On the 2nd June, Mr. Gladstone, then sitting with Sir Robert Peel on the cross-benches, resumed the debate in a most exhaustive speech. His views were not in exact accordance with either party in the debate, but he took the affirmative side on the broad question of repeal as a matter of reasonable expediency, although, on the specific scheme of Government he gave only a qualified opinion, as he would have preferred a more gradual measure. He wished Government had adhered to the uniform course of precedents, making large concessions conditional upon reciprocal action by other Powers. He objected to the discretionary power of the Queen in Council, with a view of extorting reciprocity, a discretion at once too large and too delicate: if it were really intended that this power should be a living and practical one, to be put in force in case of need, he thought it would be wiser and safer to undo, bit by bit, the system we have got, than to sweep it away in order to reconstruct it piecemeal; and then, perhaps shortly afterwards, to pull it down again. With that keen foresight for which he has ever been distinguished, he particularly censured that part of the plan which reserved the coasting trade. He contended that the American coasting trade was of the highest value, and equivalent to a colonial trade. “Let us give her our coasting trade, and we are entitled, not merely in policy but in justice, to ask her for her coasting trade. But let us give her the colonial trade without the coasting trade, and we give her the valuable boon, while we withhold the worthless; but we cannot say to her, ‘Give us all, for we have given you all.’” Mr. Gladstone relied on the sincerity of the American diplomatist, and therefore, urged this point as one of the highest importance, Mr. Bancroft’s offer appearing to him a forcible argument for including the coasting trade in any future arrangement. In conclusion, he expressed the hope that when England and America had concurred in setting an example to the world of free navigation, other nations would be induced to imitate it by a moral force it would be difficult to resist; and that we should live to see the ocean, that great highway of nations, as free as the ships that traverse its bosom, or the winds that blow over it. Though Mr. Gladstone would have preferred securing such reciprocal privileges as other nations had power to confer before throwing open our ports to their ships, his speech was in effect a splendid declamation in favour of Free-trade principles, as applied to navigation; and his argument pointed to the conclusion that, even if other nations were not prepared for reciprocity, it would still be for the interests of Great Britain to repeal her restrictive laws. [Sidenote: Mr. Hudson.]