In speaking of the tables from the Board of Trade and Customs, he said a lively impression prevailed on all sides, that they could prove anything and everything. Indeed, it had been remarked, give me half an hour, and the run of the multiplication table, and I’ll engage to pay off the National Debt. In statistics it is easy to add a little here, and subtract a little there, quietly to slip in a figure—it may be a cypher among your data—slyly to make what seems a reasonable postulate in your premises, but which turns out to be a begging of the question; and, behold, you gain your point and triumph; until, it is found that your adversary, having access to the same stores of arithmetic, proves his case, and refutes yours, with the same facility. Such are statistics when severed from sound principle and plain reasoning. But how little are these to be relied on when prepared by those in the employ of one party? To trust oneself among such details would be perilous in the extreme. “My noble friend has fared forth into the labyrinth with such bad success, that his fate seems to warn me how I venture to follow his perilous course. But there remains to deter me, like a beacon on the same coast, the sad wreck of another adventurer, the good ship _Board of Trade_, G. R. Porter, Master, cast away on the shoals of these faithless waters.” The noble Lord then assailed Mr. Porter with the whole force of his sarcasm. He said: “Mr. Porter, showing the comparative progress of English and American tonnage, takes the whole of one part and only part of the other, and thus makes out the result which suits his argument. Lord Hardwicke, the chairman, put this question to the witness, after stating the entire difference of the two returns, the difference being total in one case and partial in the other. ‘Then, consequently, these returns are not to be taken compared together, as showing in any degree the comparative value of British and American tonnage?’ Mark the answer of the hapless Mr. Porter. ‘Certainly not.’” The noble Lord then went on tearing, in the opinion of the opponents of the Bill, Mr. Porter’s evidence to shreds. “I am reminded,” said his Lordship, “of the cooking of the returns. But here we had called up the chief cook to examine him. We asked, ‘Is this dish pure?’ ‘Not at all,’ he answered. ‘Is it nutritive?’ ‘Nothing of the kind.’ ‘Is it safe and wholesome to eat?’ ‘Certainly not?’ ‘Have you any means of correcting its poison by an antidote?’ ‘I am not sure; I rather think I have; but I am not certain.’” The noble Lord then referred to the reciprocity treaties; the fact being that these treaties were all respecting differential duties; all of them were grounded on the comparatively sound principle of only relaxing our monopoly in favour of those States who agreed to give us the _quid pro quo_; whereas the present scheme was to give the _quid_ without the _quo_; to sweep away all restriction at once with