Character of the speeches at it.
Mr. Frederick Somes, the member for Hull, who moved the first resolution, declared “that nothing but ruin could result to the shipping interest,” if the existing policy was pursued; and Mr. Bramley-Moore, who seconded it, stated that “the coasting trade was gradually drifting into the hands of foreigners” (a very extraordinary statement in the face of the official returns), while he argued that, “we should have the right of selling to, as well as purchasing from, the foreigner,” as if any person or any law prevented him from doing so if he pleased. Mr. George Marshall, one of our largest and most intelligent shipowners, spoke, from experience, of the depressed state of British shipping, owing to the “inability to compete with foreigners;” and Mr. Duncan Dunbar told the meeting, but not in a doleful tone, for he was the jolliest of men, with the happiest of countenances, “that the very property he had made by his industry and hard labour was melting away like snow before the sun.”[198]
It was hopeless to expect that the Legislature would attempt to do anything, even if they could, for a body of men who, representing a great national interest, delivered such sentiments as these, and had, evidently, assembled for the purpose of obliging other people to make good any losses they might have sustained, if any there were, during the two previous years, while pocketing in silence, for their own special benefit, the large profits they had secured during the Crimean war. What had Government to do with the profits and losses of Shipowners any more than it had to do with those of any other branch of trade? Invited, as I had been, to take part in these deliberations, I felt that I should do wrong were I not, regardless of any insults to myself, to step forward and attempt to expose the fallacy of the course pursued by the meeting, especially, as the Shipowners had grievances which really ought to be redressed, and to which the Legislature, I felt sure, would readily listen, if properly appealed to. Shipowners were then, unquestionably, subjected to various burdens which would never have been imposed upon them had they not been a protected class, and, as such, supposed to derive advantages from which other classes of the community were excluded; burdens, too, I am bound and willing to add, from which they ought to have been relieved when the Navigation Laws were repealed.
Mr. Lindsay proposes an amendment.
Feeling, therefore, that the time of this large and important meeting would be wasted in vain and useless resolutions, I stepped forward to the front of the platform, resolved, at all hazards, to endure every contumely, and, if I could not carry an amendment, which I saw was altogether hopeless, to at least enter my protest as a British Shipowner against such subservient and worthless appeals to the Legislature of our country. My appearance on the front row was the signal for a yell of derision; and my amendment, which I had hastily written in pencil, “that a petition be presented to both Houses of Parliament, praying for an inquiry into the actual condition of British navigation, and for relief from all peculiar burdens and restrictions that still fetter maritime enterprise,” was received with hisses and the loudest and rudest demonstrations of dissatisfaction.
Although these events are matters for history, they are of too personal a character to be pursued at length; however, that my readers may form some idea of the feelings of a very large number of the most influential Shipowners of the period, I furnish in a foot-note[199] extracts from the report which appeared in the ‘Times’ and of other journals of the proceedings of this great meeting.
Effect of the war between France and Austria.
But, even if the Legislature had been disposed to consider the wailings of the Shipowners, or to listen to their unreasonable demands, an event supervened which for a time changed the aspect of their affairs. Critical questions arose in Europe. Political relations between France and Austria had become most unsatisfactory. The Emperor of the French, having recently, by a member of his family, contracted an alliance with a Princess of the House of Savoy, welded another political link with the King of Sardinia, and, on the 1st January, 1860, announced an approaching rupture with Austria. “A cry of anguish” arose from the provinces of Lombardy; and all the miseries the Italians, during many years, had suffered from Austrian domination were suddenly and ostentatiously paraded before the world. Free Europe witnessed with astonishment the scene in which the despotic Emperor of the French complained of the tyranny exercised by another despot in Austria, over a portion of Austrian subjects, whilst the Emperor of Russia, more despotic than either, joined in the strange and mysterious confederacy, and affected sympathy for the down-trodden and oppressed Italians.
It was impossible for Great Britain to remain indifferent while events so momentous were happening in rapid succession on the continent of Europe; hence, when Austria summoned Sardinia to disarm, and the French troops were put in motion to cross the Alps, the English people, carried away by their sympathies for the oppressed Italians, and forgetting to inquire “Can grapes come from thorns, or figs from thistles?” were almost willing to join France and aid her in her real object, the advancement of the eastern portion of the Empire towards the Rhine. But, whatever the results of the short but great war then publicly proclaimed by France and Sardinia against Austria, its effect, by increasing the demand for shipping, combined with other causes, proved very salutary to the fortunes of British Shipowners.
Mr. Lindsay moves for an inquiry into the burdens on the Shipping Interest, January 31, 1860.