HL Deb 20 March 1827 vol 16 c1280
The Marquis of Londonderry

presented a Petition from the Master Ship-carpenters, Hope, Sail, and Mast makers of Sunderland, in the county of Durham, against any alteration in the Navigation Laws. He stated, that those laws under which the shipping interest had been protected were now to be put aside; and he certainly wished to know where the changes in the fundamental principles of the constitution were to end. Those fundamental principles had been changed in many very serious and important points. When untoward fate took away a much lamented statesman, a beloved relation of his, the councils of this country, both at home and abroad, were directed on principles of perfect security, through all parts of our establishments. Both as regarded foreign and internal policy, the Navigation act of Charles 2nd had been infringed upon, step by step, and he did not know to what extent, these new experiments might go. It, therefore, became the duty of persons connected with the shipping interest, and also of those who were connected with landed property, to see if any stop was likely to be put to these new experiments. Me hoped the time was not far distant when he should know who was at the head of his majesty's government, and see upon what principles it was to be conducted. At present, there was a schism in the government which he should be glad to see healed. It was a melancholy circumstance, that at the time when an illustrious individual had been prevented, by the decree of Providence, from attending to his duties in parliament (which no man could lament more than he did), to think that, by the decree of the same Providence, those individuals who ought to be at their post answering for all those principles, were equally unable to attend. He hoped that the illness of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and of the President of the Board of Trade, would not be of long duration; and that the country would soon have a government to which it could look up with confidence. Unless something was soon done with respect to the state of his majesty's government, he should feel it to be his humble duty, possessed as he was of inferior abilities, to ask a distinct question upon the subject.