This was, perhaps, the last chance offered to the Shipowners: they, however, relied upon throwing out the Bill, and rejected every offer at modification, or conditional relaxation of the existing law, their aim being to uphold those laws in their integrity. Mr. Gladstone’s views, on the other hand, favoured the adoption of conditional legislation, but not exactly in the way proposed by Mr. Bouverie. He proposed to divide the whole trade of the empire into two divisions only: the first of them relating to domestic or British trade; including under that head the trade coastwise and the colonial trade. He proposed to enact a law, not dependent on the discretion of the ministers of the Crown, otherwise than that it would be their business to ascertain when any country was disposed to give Great Britain perfect freedom in its foreign trade, and to provide in such a case that it should receive in return her foreign trade. Whenever any nation would propose perfect freedom in all maritime trade, both foreign and domestic, it would be placed on equal terms with British vessels in all ports, foreign, colonial, and coasting. Mr. Gladstone, however, contemplated a provision for the foreign trade of the colonies by dealing with that trade irrespectively of the conduct of other countries. He suggested the repeal of every direct restraint on the importation of tropical produce—or non-European produce—from Europe, that being a restraint which, according to the actual law, affected British ships as well as those of foreign countries. He was also for the repeal of all fiscal restraints, and of every restraint of the nature of a tax on the British Shipowner. He would have set him free, alike with respect to the command and the manning of his ship; he would also have allowed a drawback on the timber used in the construction of ships. [Sidenote: also opposed by the Shipowners.] Such were Mr. Gladstone’s views, which he was sanguine enough to imagine would have been acceptable to the shipping interests, had he proposed a scheme embodying his opinions, and invited the Legislature to make the necessary fiscal alterations. But when Mr. Gladstone saw that both the Government and Shipowners rejected Mr. Bouverie’s proposal, a form as it unquestionably was of conditional legislation, he relinquished his intention of bringing his plan before the House, as it had in fact no chance of being accepted by either party. Such was the temper of all parties when the Bill went into committee on the 23rd March, 1849; Mr. Herries, before the Speaker left the chair, having intimated his intention of opposing the Bill during all its stages, believing that it could not be rendered a good Bill, whatever alterations might be made in it.