SHIPPING—OFFICIAL RETURNS. (Hansard, 20 December 1847)

§ LORD G. BENTINCK

would seize the present opportunity to call the attention of the House to a return for which he had moved on the 23rd of November. It was a return of the number and tonnage of British steam-vessels which had entered the ports of this country from Holland, Belgium, and France, during 1846; and also the number of men by whom the same were manned. With respect to every one of these matters, the officers whose duty it was to make up the returns had disobeyed the orders of the House. He was aware that this arose from no fault of the Government, as it was impossible that Ministers could attend to the drudgery of such details as a strict examination of such returns would render necessary; but certainly it was the business of officers who drew up returns to see that they were accurate. The fact, however, was, that this return was one calculated altogether to deceive the House, whether it regarded the number of ships, the tonnage, or the number of men by whom they were manned. The return showed ninety steam-vessels, manned by 1,369 men, and a tonnage of 14,811 tons. By accident his attention was directed to the fact that there were several vessels in the return having the same name; that not less then fifteen vessels were in this position—eight of them Government steamers, and seven of them merchant steamers—all of them being entered twice over; the tonnage of each was nearly the same, and they were all manned by nearly the same number of crews. It was, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the entry of these ships had been given twice over. There were three others of which he had very great suspicion—these were the Wilberforce, the Ocean, and the Sir William Wallace. The Sir William Wallace was given three times. Of the other two, the crews not being exactly alike in both cases, there was some doubt whether they were the 1440 same vessels repeated, or different ressels of the same name. The result of this inaccuracy was, that the return showed a steam force of ninety, instead of only seventy-two ships; a force of men amounting to 1,369, instead of 1,123; and a tonnage of 14,811, instead of 12,459. It was impossible for that House to legislate on the authority of such returns as these. His object in moving for these returns was to obtain a correction of another return which had been presented, and in which the amount of protected and unprotected trade was given in a paper compiled by Mr. Porter. That paper stated the amount of the trade to France in 1824 to be 82,650 tons; while last year it was represented to have increased to 526,821 tons. He doubted this return, as he could not believe that the miserable steam-boats which cross the Channel could have been introduced with their repeated voyages to make up this enormous amount of tonnage. The two returns, however, corrected each other; and the last one showed that the seventy-two vessels, with the number of men and the amount of tonnage he had stated, figured in the Board of Trade returns as representing 388,313 tons. He called for the return in order that the country might not be deceived, in treating of the navigation laws, by unexplained official returns showing a great array of figures. Four of these steamers alone, which measured in the average 111 tons, and were manned only by 52 men, by dint of making within the year 548 trips across the Channel, figured in the returns as representing 61,441 tons engaged in our foreign trade. In point of fact, in Mr. Porter's returns these four miserable little steam-boats, averaging 111 tons each, figured as of superior importance to sixty great East Indiamen of 1,000 tons apiece, and manned by 3,000 seamen. He thought it was only right to call the attention of the House to this subject, as a warning with regard to other returns; and though he made no complaint against the Government, he certainly thought the House was entitled to expect accuracy in the officers employed to discharge the duties entrusted to them.