§ On the motion that the Pilots' Bill be read a third time,
Mr. W. Attwoodsaid, he had no intention of opposing the progress of the bill. It was intended to allow certain vessels to be relieved under particular circumstances from obligations and expenses to which they were now subjected, and he was bound to say, that he felt that the claim for relief was founded in justice in those cases to which the powers given by the bill were intended to apply, and he was satisfied that those powers would be exercised with due discretion so far as they were under the control of the right hon. the President of the Board of Trade. At the same time, he must observe that when the measure was originally introduced, he had entertained the hope that the President of the Board of Trade would have been enabled to take this opportunity of effecting a material improvement in some parts of the system of pilotage; that he would on this occasion have removed to some extent from an important class of British shipping burthens of a serious and, he must say, oppressive nature which now existed; and would have substituted a direct and positive relief for that indirect mode of avoiding those burthens which had been practically adopted, which had occasioned the necessity of this bill, and without the aid of which the trade of this country must have suffered to a very considerable extent. A large portion of the shipping interest looked with great anxiety to this question, and he hoped it would receive the attention which it merited.
§ Bill read a third time and passed.