[47] The Committee consisted of Mr. Ricardo, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Alderman Thompson, Mr. Villiers, Sir Howard Douglas, Admiral Dundas, Mr. Lyall, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Thomas Baring, Mr. Hume, Mr. Liddell, Sir George Clerk, and Mr. Milner Gibson. [48] This section was originally specially aimed at the Dutch, who had few native productions of their own. [49] Tangier, opposite Gibraltar, was at that time an important British possession. [50] Our space only admits of an abridgment, but the reader will find all details about the Navigation Law in a paper by Mr. J. S. (now Sir John Shaw) Lefevre, published in the Appendix to the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1847. [51] Those of my readers who are curious to study the laws whereby we hoped to bring the “rebellious colonies to order,”—vain hope!—or who may desire to know how the parent treated its own offspring when the children felt themselves strong enough to do for themselves, may read, as I have done, though perhaps not to much advantage, 14 Geo. III., cap. 19; 15 Geo. III., cap. 18; and 16 Geo. III., cap. 5: all passed in rapid succession under the melancholy delusion that they would have the effect of a Pope’s Bull!—and that, too, on an enlightened but oppressed people, who had resolved to govern themselves! My readers may then turn to 23 Geo. III., cap. 26, and 23 Geo. III., cap. 39, where an attempt was made to mend matters by some sort of regulation of trade between the two countries, whereby Great Britain resolved to have the lion’s share; and then to 25 Geo. III., cap. 1; 27 Geo. III., cap. 7; and 28 Geo. III., cap. 6, where certain modifications were made, or rather could be made by “Order in Council,” and where “thirty enumerated articles” the “growth, produce, or manufactures of the States,” might be “carried into the British West Indies from the United States,” but then “_only_ by British subjects in British ships”! If my readers are disposed to go further—though I cannot recommend the research—into this wretched system of legislation, they may refer to 31 Geo. III. cap. 38, where the Governors of the West India Islands were allowed to relax certain prohibitions “in case of public emergency;” and to 51 Geo. III., cap. 47, sect. 6, and 58 Geo. III., cap. 27, where we seem to have gained a little more wisdom by extending certain “privileges”!—_rights_ (?)—to an independent and industrious people. [52] The grounds of these important modifications of our Navigation System were stated in Mr. Huskisson’s Speech, 12th May, 1826. [53] The Americans acted on the section of the Act, which says, “any articles which may be legally exported from the United Kingdom to the said settlements.” Thus Canton was deemed a foreign place with regard to the American Trade; but, in that it was included within the limits of the East India Company’s Charter, American vessels could trade there though English vessels could not!