Volumes of statistics were brought forward by Mr. George Frederick Young, who appeared as chief spokesman, and, as heretofore, the undaunted champion of his party, to show that, though British shipping had increased since the repeal of the Navigation Laws, foreign vessels frequenting our ports had done so in a far greater proportion. Mr. Young repudiated the idea—the “delusion”—that consumers were benefited by the reduction of freight to the full extent of the difference which must exist between the sum paid to the English carrier and the rate of freight paid to his foreign competitor; and concluded his remarks by a resolution to the effect that the existing “most deplorable and ruinous depression” had been partly caused, and was greatly aggravated by the unequal competition to which British shipping was exposed by the repeal of the Navigation Laws. Other speakers from Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, Shields, Montrose, Dundee, and Aberdeen described the state of affairs in their several localities; and, finally, a petition to the Queen was agreed on, recapitulating the progress of legislation on the Navigation Laws, and alleging that the apprehensions entertained when that measure passed were fully verified by the result. Similar meetings were held in various other parts of the country, including Tynemouth and North Shields, which I then represented, and a wish was intimated to me from those places that I should bring the state of the shipping interest under the notice of the House of Commons. Although I entertained very different views to those expressed at these meetings, I felt, nevertheless, that our Shipowners had many just causes for complaint; and that, though it was now alike beyond the power of the Legislature to control the rising destinies of other and rival nations, or even confine their mercantile marine within the narrow limits prescribed by our jealousy, so as to remove all dread of foreign competition, there were yet many burdens from which they ought to be relieved, and many restrictions, to which they would never have been subjected by the State, had it not been considered that they derived peculiar benefits from the laws so long enforced for their supposed advantage. [Sidenote: Mr. Lindsay moves for a Committee of Inquiry.] Accordingly I moved for a committee “to inquire into the operation of certain burdens specially affecting merchant shipping,” which after an interesting debate the House was pleased to grant. But the committee had scarcely assembled when Parliament was dissolved, and it was not until a new Parliament had met, that the subject was again brought under the notice of the House of Commons. In the meantime the Shipowners’ Society of London had urged Government, in a letter of the 22nd February, 1859, for a reply to their petition praying the Queen to exercise the powers vested in her, and to put in force the retaliatory clause of the Repeal Act of 1849. [Sidenote: Well-drawn petition of the Shipowners.]