The debate on Mr. Labouchere’s resolution brought out again all Mr. Herries’ arguments and adverse predictions about repeal. Alderman Thompson complained that the United States minister was recalled with every change of Presidency, and that Mr. Bancroft was notoriously more liberal than President Taylor, who had been elected upon the principle of Protection to native industry. Mr. Banks, Mr. Hildyard, Sir John Tyrrell, and the Marquess of Granby followed Mr. Herries and Alderman Thompson in the same line of objection; whilst Mr. Hume, Colonel Thompson, Mr. Mitchell, and Mr. John Williams, maintained the Free-trade line of argument. Mr. J. L. Ricardo vehemently supported the extreme views of Free-trade, and said emphatically to the shipowners: “Depend upon yourselves—depend upon your energies as Englishmen—depend upon the resources of this country and the wealth which commands the resources of the world, and do not trust to Acts of Parliament. It would be better to send forth our ships free as the winds which filled their sails, with liberty to go where they would, and come from where it suited them, than to start them from our ports encumbered with the 8 & 9 Vict. cap. 88, and ballasted with twelve volumes of Hertslet’s ‘Commercial Treaties.’” The resolution was agreed to without a trial of strength, and the Bill was brought in.[107] It contained twenty-three clauses. [Sidenote: Meeting of the Shipowners’ Society.] Upon the 2nd March, the second reading of the Bill having been fixed for the 9th March, the General Shipowners’ Society held their annual meeting at the London Tavern. Their accustomed comments upon lights, harbours, and pilotage; discriminating duties in foreign ports; the East Indian salt monopoly; the Merchant Seamen’s Act; the Passengers’ Act; the Merchant Seamen’s Fund, and a variety of other points, which, at ordinary times, usually occupied a large share of their attention and space in their report—were on this occasion all subordinate to the one question of all-absorbing consequence, the threatened impending repeal of the Navigation Laws. To discuss special regulations affecting maritime commerce, while the whole question of general policy trembled in the balance, was both inconvenient and embarrassing. [Sidenote: Their report.]