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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 793: MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE RESPECTING FREE TRADE.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE RESPECTING FREE TRADE.

A commercial question of still greater importance than that of the corn-laws was also, during this session, introduced into parliament. Petitions from the city of London, and from Glasgow, prayed for free trade; and Mr. Baring, who presented that of the London merchants to the commons, insisted that freedom from restriction is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, as well as the best direction to the capital and industry of the country. No formal motion was made in the commons on this subject; but in the lords, on the 26th of May, Lord Lansdowne moved for a committee of inquiry concerning the foreign trade of the empire. This proposal elicited a speech from the Earl of Liverpool, in which his lordship, as head of the administration, declared his assent to the principles of free trade, expressing his conviction that it would have been better for the world had such principles always been acted upon, and advising the recognition of such exceptions only, as the policy of the world and the laws of the country dictated. The motion was carried unanimously.