every country before we secured an equivalent from any one; and so far from proportioning our sacrifice to our gain, to sacrifice everything before we gained anything. [Sidenote: Protected and unprotected trade.] “On the statistics of the protected and unprotected trades,” continued his Lordship, “it is, that the greatest errors have been committed. It was among these shoals that Mr. Porter had left a wreck, as a beacon to warn us how we follow his course. He, no doubt, had steered to the best of his ability, and quite unconsciously had been cast away; but, that he acted under the bias of a strong prejudice in favour of his ally and relative, the author of the present Bill, is very much to be suspected, for we all know that the Bill is really Mr. Ricardo’s, who, in 1847, moved the Committee on the Navigation Laws, the Government being afterwards pushed on by their supporters, impatient at seeing them hold their places and do nothing.” After dissecting these tables with a ruthless hand, Lord Brougham asked how any rational man could place reliance upon tables thus framed, and thus abounding on their face with errors the most fatal. Their great concoctor is asked about these errors, and he cannot deny them, so he says the heading of the return is wrong, and that instead of “unprotected,” it should have been “less protected.” Indeed! But that is just giving up the whole value of the table, and making it utterly useless—utterly unfit to be the ground of any inference whatever—utterly foreign to the present question. For, observe, we can understand what is meant by a trade unprotected by the Navigation Laws, and compare it with one that is protected; but a trade “less protected,” how is that to be defined? Less protected than what? What does this tell us? What makes more, what less? How can we compare them together? All depends upon how much more and how much less, and this Mr. Porter does not affect to show. [Sidenote: Voyages to the continent.] “But,” exclaimed his Lordship, “this is not the worst of it by a great deal!” He then sifted the whole returns about the voyages to the continent, to which I have already referred. “My Lords, I will readily give a large licence for exaggeration to that lively class of persons who contribute to our amusement by their powers of imagination, drawing upon their fancy for their facts, and on their memory for their jests. To these men I render all grateful homage, as among the gayest of our sad species; so far as fourfold, or even tenfold, I am willing to extend my licence. But what shall we say of a hundredfold, nay, a hundred-and-fiftyfold, and that, not by the lively wit, but by the plodding dealer in returns, tables, and trade and shipping statistics. I must really send them away to bury themselves and their errors in the recesses of the trade department, and no longer hope to obtain any faith here. I have done with such food, such dry food even when it is honestly prepared and fairly served up.”