§ General Gascoynepresented a petition, which he said was very respectably signed by the merchants and ship owners of the town of Liverpool. It was different from the petition which he had lately the honour of presenting to the House. It was founded upon a report which had gone abroad of an intended alteration of the duties on timber coming from the Baltic. It pointed out the advantages to be derived from a continuance of the timber-trade to our American colonies, which among its other benefits occasioned a consumption of British manufactures which could not be expected from the Baltic, if we should renew the timber-trade with that quarter by lowering the duties. Such decrease of the duties would, they observed, not only be extremely injurious to the shipowners, but to the seamen now employed, and to those emigrants who had gone out to the Canadas.
§ Sir Isaac Coffinsaid, that fron his own knowledge he could assure the House that not a single emigrant in Canada was employed in cutting down the timber imported from America.
§ Ordered to lie on the table.