§ Mr. Staniforth presented a Petition from several merchants, ship-owners, and other inhabitants of the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, setting forth,
§ "That the petitioners, being deeply impressed with a sense of the magnitude and extent of the evils arising from the present system of granting licences to foreign Vessels to trade between this country and ports from which the British flag is excluded, beg leave to approach the House with a statement of their opinion on a subject, as it appears to the petitioners, of the very last importance to the commercial interests of the united kingdom; and that the House is well aware, that the port of Hull has long been most intimately concerned in the Baltic trade, to that trade, indeed, may principally be ascribed its prosperity and mercantile importance; 980 but, within these few years, the hostile attitude of the northern powers has been followed by a corresponding pressure upon it; the intercourse with the north of Europe has however at no time been wholly discontinued, notwithstanding the exclusion of the British flag from its ports; and it is to the manner in which this intercourse has been, and continues to be carried on, that the petitioners now humbly and earnestly pray the attention of the House; and that the papers and documents on the table of the House will shew that licences are granted by the Board of Trade to foreign vessels, authorizing them to carry on commerce between this country and ports which do not admit its flag; encouragement is thus held out to the ship-builders of the continent, by affording them the chance of sale for their ships to those British subjects who avail themselves of the protection of licences, although in such cases, there is the advantage of the employment of British capital; yet it is manifestly obtained at the expence of our own shipbuilders and sailors, whose place is supplied by a race of aliens; and that a very large proportion, however, of the ships themselves is really the property of foreigners, who receive an enormous sum for freight, not less than three times the amount of what would be paid for similar voyages in a time of unrestricted commerce; this the petitioners would point out as a ruinous drain on the resources of the country, and as contributing, in a most important degree, to the present unfavourable course of exchange, and the deranged state of the currency; it is also a lamentable fact, that numbers of British licences have been publicly sold on the continent, and that, by means of those licences, and even under the protection of British convoys, our enemies have been supplied, to a great extent, with naval stores, conveyed directly into their own harbours from different ports of the Baltic; and that, in the whole of the extensive trade carried on under the protection of British licences, foreign sailors are necessarily and exclusively employed; and the petitioners do not know that any language of theirs can speak more forcibly than the statement of this simple fact; it is in direct violation of those principles of navigation, an adherence to which has been a great cause of our prosperity, a safeguard of our independence, and with which the commerce of this country must 981 rise and fall, thousands of men, the subjects of hostile states, are trained up at our expence, enriched with our wealth, inured in our employ to the toils of a seafaring life, and made acquainted with every creek and headland of our coasts that the petitioners have been eye-witnesses of the rapid and astonishing improvement in the appearance and skill of these men during the last few years, and they cannot but be deeply sensible of the immense advantages thereby accruing to the already gigantic power of France, especially in the event of an attack upon our shores, which, the petitioners conceive, the present system tends most materially to encourage and accelerate; and that the losses arising from capture, from extra insurance, and from fraud on the part of the foreign captains employed, are severely felt; but there is another point of view, contemplated in which, the subject presents itself in awful and alarming colours, and forces itself upon their serious consideration; and that the petitioners regard the honour and the good faith which have hitherto been conspicuous in the character of British merchants, as dearer to them than any advantage which the commerce of the world can offer as a compensation for them; and that the system of licences, by rendering it necessary for the ships to be provided with sets of forged, or, as they are termed, simulated papers, has a direct tendency to subvert this honourable character, is therefore, in the judgment of the petitioners, a most weighty argument against it, and cannot be too strongly inculcated on the minds of our countrymen; the young men on whom in future will devolve the management of the commercial transactions of this kingdom, are thus familiarized with a course of systematic falshood, and accustomed daily to witness acts of forgery and perjury, which are destructive not merely of mercantile probity, but of that general feeling of moral rectitude, which is the best bulwark of a state, and for her pre-eminence in which our country has hitherto been so highly and so justly distinguished; and that the petitioners are firmly convinced that the preservation of this moral principle is necessary to the prosperity of these dominions, at the same time that they are not insensible to the effects of the present interruption to free intercourse with foreign countries; they trust therefore that the House will give them 982 credit for their sincerity, when they state that they would rather submit to still greater privations than consent to pursue the system now acted upon, and of which they have, on the above grounds, ventured to express their unqualified abhorrence; and that, if a blockade of hostile ports, especially those of the Baltic, be deemed, as the petitioners judge it to be, advisable, they would humbly recommend that it be full and complete, and not rendered ineffectual by licences or evasions of any kind whatsoever; and they are persuaded that, both in a commercial and a financial point of view, this country is more able than its enemies to bear the pressure in such a case unavoidable; and that, had it been sooner adopted, we should ere this have come to an amicable arrangement with the Northern states of Europe; and that the petitioners will not dwell on the encouragement which a change of the present system would hold out to our North American colonies, which are capable of supplying us with many of the articles hitherto procured from the Baltic, but they will conclude by begging leave to refer, for the proof of their assertions, to the official papers laid before the House, which will shew more accurately than it is in their power to do, the extent of the commerce carried on under licences, and the number of ships and sailors employed therein; and that they feel the subject in question to be of momentous importance to the nation at large, as well as one in which their peculiar interests are more particularly involved; and praying the House to take into its most serious consideration the system of granting licences to foreign vessels, and to apply such remedy as in their wisdom may appear to be best suited to the exigencies of the case."
§ Ordered to lie upon the table.