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into detail, was the old shipping system. Into that system he did not chuse to follow the hon. member, however much he might be disposed to do so, if that question bore at all upon the present case, for he had felt it his duty to take an active part in opposing the old shipping system, and might be presumed therefore to be somewhat acquainted with it, and with the system substituted in its place, in the introduction of which he had been a humble labourer, as he had also ever since anxiously watched its progress, and sought its permanence. But he was at a loss to conceive how the details of the old shipping system could throw any light on the present proceeding, unless a kind of analogy was intended to be made out, that as the old system was supposed to be very much upheld by private influence and favouritism, so something of the same nature might have operated in the present proceeding. But he could in the most serious manner state that if ever there was a question which came before the court of proprietors without any influence, it was the present question. He did not know that a single member of the court of directors had been canvassed by any one individual who was either a ship-owner or any way directly or indirectly connected with the present shipping interest. For the court of directors and for himself especially, he distinctly declared that they had been induced to recommend the proposed measure, not primarily or chiefly as it respected the interest of the ship owners, but upon a general consideration of the true practical interests of the company, connected as they must be with the principles of equity, sound policy, and general utility. (Hear! hear! hear!)

It should be observed that the court of directors were placed in a dilemma, for which no practicable remedy appeared, but the one proposed. They had not brought themselves into this situation. It was produced unavoidably by the course of public events. The great crisis at which Europe had now arrived involved in it the difficulties and inconveniences which occasioned the measure now in question. Events which the company could not controul had occurred to render necessary, even to the continuance of the substantial benefits of the present shipping system, that some modification of it in so extraordinary a case should take place.

It was well known that one principle in the new shipping system of the company, was the principle of fair and open competition. Tenders of contract were invited from all parties upon this principle; the ships were to be tendered for their whole duration, usually reckoned six voyages, at cone permanent rate of

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peace freight. The reason for these conditions was that no discretion might be left to vary the rate of freight from voyage to voyage. The extraordinary expenses incident to a time of war were necessarily left to be settled between the directors and the owners according to the circumstances of the time. No doubt the effects of this system had proved very salutary to the company:they had procured their ships on terms proportionably reasonable. He was not prepared to say that it had answered equally well to the ship-owners. There was certainly one inconvenience in the nature of the system that of engaging at one rate of freight for six voyages which might be reckoned twelve years, a period liable to many changes; but in a time of peace the inconvenience might not be great; it was after a war that the peace prices of stores might be expected to vary from what they had been before the war. was impossible to foresee when this new system was introduced (1796) that the war in which the country was then engaged, would last with hardly any intermission for twenty years. Every man knows what the effects of a war of such length must have been upon all the branches of commerce and every thing which related to civil life. The prices of all the articles necessary to the outfit of ships had. risen to an enormous amount, beyond all human foresight. Of course ships could not now on the return of peace, be fitted out at any thing like the amount of outfit before the war. Hence the present great difficulty. During the war, as, by agreement, the owners were allowed what the extraordinary expenses of war required above the peace rate of freight, they might do well enough, and some experience a profitable result; though he thought in general their gains had been but moderate, otherwise he should not be so ready to propose relief to them on the present occasion. But according to the actual cost of stores of all kinds, of of ship building and repairs, it was plainly impossible that the ships could not be sailed at the peace rates of freight for which they had engaged, without ruinous loss to the owners, and eventually the loss of the service of the ships to the company, who would in consequence be obliged to hire other ships, less fitted for their employ, at higher rates of freight than would be given to the existing ships even if the proposed measure were adopted. This would be further explained in the sequel.

But to proceed to some of the statements of the honourable gentleman. The honourable gentleman had laboured to shew that the grant of the proposed relief was against the system which had been so highly extolled-against the bye

laws against the act of parliament and against the interests of the company.

He denied that upon a fair and just understanding of the whole case, any one of those positions would be made out. He would look first at that point which was the most material, the interest of the company. What was the leading object of the proposition now before the court? It was that very interest. There was no question that the company must have ships to carry on their tradethe fittest, indeed the only fit ships are those purposely constructed for it. If the company by rigorously exacting from the owners the performance of their contracts at the low rate of peace freight, were to incapacitate those owners from going on, as must be the case with respect to many of them, these ships would of course cease to sail on their present terms-and then the company must look to other ships, or to these upon inIcreased terms. In either case what the company might recover by a course of law in penalties and damages, could not be considered a compensation for the derangements, inconveniences, and such encreased rates of freight as must be incurred; not to insist now on the injury which would be done to the present shipping system of which the value is so much acknowledged, by a rigorous enforcement, which would tend both to check and to enhance future offers of ships on the existing principle. The experience of the last few days had given the directors some insight into what they had reason to expect, as to the rates of tenders now that peace was restored. Of all the tenders which they had recently received, there was none lower than 267. per ton. Almost all were higher, some about a third more, and it must be presumed, that according to the circumstances of the times, many of these were not inequitable rates. Supposing then, for the sake of argument, that 267. per ton was an equitable rate of freight, at the present time (though the rates lately proposed were for the end of 1817), how was it possible that those ships which had been hired at 167. 177. 187. or 197. per ton, could sail at those rates? The court of proprietors had in fact only one alternative. They must either drive the owners of the ships in question to the extremity of throwing up their contracts, or give them that which should appear to be a reasonable additional allowance. That is, something that will save them from ruinous loss, though it will not amount to what must be paid for ships now taken up. Here it is the interest of the company, in point of couvenience and of pecuniary consideration, to adopt the last member of the alternative. They must either do this, unless they can devise some other

expedient which would ensure the same end, or else take up with one more disadvantageous to the company. The question was, therefore, and it behoved them to look at it fairly, whether they would throw out the present ships which they might retain at moderate additional allowance, or take up new ships for which they must of necessity pay more than they would pay in the other case. The honourable gentleman had insinuated that this would not be the effect. But he (the Chairman) denied the position, for he would undertake to demonstrate that the additional allowance to be made the present owners would fall considerably short of the rates of freight which must at present be required.

And here, before proceeding further, he might notice an observation which the honourable gentleman had insisted on. He had said that the court of directors had offered no reasons in support of the measure they recommended. He (the Chairman) presumed that after examining the report which had been submitted to the proprietors, there would be found sufficient reasons to justify the proposal. The hon. gentleman had urged against it no reason of his own; for all his reasons were drawn from the report of the direc tors in 1803, which was quoted and referred to in their present report; only in his way of using both these reports, he has employed them in direct contradiction to the intention of the authors, and in opposition to the conclusion to which those authors after due consideration of all circumstances came. But the hon. gentleman had also said, that the granting of additional allowances was contrary to the bye-laws, and he quoted an act of parliament in which he found a special provision guarding against this very principle. If however the hon. gentleman thought proper to rely upon the authority of parliament as having in one act established the principle of a permanent rate of peace freight, he (the Chairman) had only to observe, that there was another act of parliament of equal validity passed in 1803 which allowed the directors to depart from that principle he so much insisted on. This latter act formed the precedent upon which the court of directors acted in a case of the very same nature.

The hon. gentleman had indeed attempted to shew that the present was not such a case as that made out in the year 1803, and that the measure then agreed to in consequence of the peace of Amiens, was of no authority in the instance now before us as a precedent. His reason for advancing this notion seemed to be, that the act of 1803 was actually passed after war had again broke out, whence he might infer, that it contemplated a state of war. But he (the Chairman) had taken a part in

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the discussion of that act in the House of Commons; he had also been actively concerned as a director in the proceedings which led to that act, in preparing for its introduction into the house, and could with perfect certainty state that the hon. gentleman's notion was entirely unfounded. It might be true that after the treaty of Amiens there was less prospect of the continuance of peace than there is at present; and it is true that before the act of 1803 passed, the nation was again at war; but what he insisted on, and what was decisive of the point at issue between him and the hon. gentleman was, that the report of 1803, upon which the hon. gentleman had been pleased to pass some commendation, was drawn up entirely, and grounded expressly on the contemplation of a state of permanent peace. It was not apprehended at the time the report was framed, that the war would be renewed; the report went upon the supposition of the permanence of the peace, the return of which was the foundation of the report, and of the parliamentary measure subsequently adopted. Hostilities had indeed recommenced before the bill actually passed, and so far the difficulties attending the adjustment of the rates of freight in consequence of peace were abridged. But the provisions of the act respected the freights to be given for the interval of peace, in entire conformity to the principle of the report of 1803, which went to grant an allowance in peace, on the ground that the prices of stores had not returned to a peace level.

With respect to the objection founded upon the bye-laws, he (the Chairman) knew of no bye-law which justified the hon. -gentleman's argument. He was not aware of any thing in them that justified it. The bye-laws respecting shipping had been enacted under the prevalence of the old shipping system, and might not be in all points adjusted to the new system since established, but he knew of no such bye-laws as the hon. gentleman alluded to. The 13th chapter of the bye-laws to which he seemed to refer (Here the Chairman was about to read the second section of that chapter when,

Mr. Hume interposed and said, that was not the article to which he alluded; and referred to the 67th page of the byelaws.

The Chairman referred to the page alluded to, sect. 3d, which requires that in deciding upon tenders made to contract for building ships for the company the lowest rate of peace freight shall be accepted. This law which had been in force in 1803, did not apply so as to controul the present question in favour of which the former example given by the general court, and by parliament upon special reasons, was to be pleaded.

The hon. gentleman had objected to the terms in which this question was brought forward, and seemed to assume, that although it was brought forward for one year only it was meant to sanction the same proceeding in future years. Certainly the court of directors did not intend that it should be continued from year to year. They confidently expected that things would in consequence of the consolidation of peace, come into a more settled state than they were in at present, and with an expectation of this sort, it must be quite out of their contemplation that the measure should continue from the me year to year. Such a supposition was contrary to the idea upon which they had proceeded, and gave a wrong view of it; for no such intention had ever entered into their minds..

The hon. gentleman had omitted, he would not say studiously-some part of the report of the committee of 1803; whence instead of giving that report as in candour it ought to have, its full authority in the consideration of the subject before the court, the hon. gentleman selected only such parts as answered his own purpose of shewing that the present measure was incompatible with the preservation of the new shipping system. Now there was in that report an express admission that if a case could be shewn in which the system could not be rigidly maintained without ruinous loss to the owners, it might then be a question whether the court of directors should not have the power of adopting such a remedy as that particular case required, or in other words to afford such relief as was absolutely wanted; and it was assumed that such an extraordinary act might upon a clear exigency be resorted to without breaking down the system.

Such a measure, had then been adopted, and at the end of 13 years, under circumstances equal or more extraordinary, all that was now proposed was a measure of the same kind. The proprietors had the precedent before them, and he (the Chairman) was not aware of the smallest distinction between that case and the present, excepting that the country was now arrived at what, he trusted, would be a more permanent state of peace. No doubt at that time, the war was soon after renewed: but that circumstance did not at all alter the principle of the argument in 1802. The principle at that time established was to make provision for the extraordinary circumstances which were found to exist upon the return of peace, and to regulate the rates of freight with reference to the actual price of storess assuming that things were to return to a standard, as would render such regulato tions unnecessaryast

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The hon. gentleman had said a greate deal about contracts, and bad thought

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than those would recover whose security bonds were in the hands of the company. It would be matter of discretion in the directors; and those owners would get no more allowance, than if the company had the utmost controul over them; therefore the circumstance which the honourable gentleman alluded to with so much triumph perhaps as a matter of reflection upon the management of the directors had no effect whatever upon the question. The owners were bound by their tenders ; and what the directors now proposed was, not to give any right to the owners, but to leave every thing in the discretion of the directors as to the allowances to be made. In this point of view, therefore, the objection about the security bonds fell entirely to the ground, The hon. gentleman had alluded to the case of the ship Astell, as an instance in which the court of directors had illegally departed from the system established by law, and he had taken occasion to declaim upon it as affording an evidence of the misconduct of the directors, and an argument for restraining that discretion which they had thought proper to require. Now, it was true that the mode of paying the war extraordinaries to the ship Astell had been changed, but the inference drawn from that fact by the hon. gentleman was fallacious. Neither did the Astell furnish the first instance of this kind, as might be conceived from the hon. gentleman's men tioning primarily and prominently the case of that ship. The directors had exercised a like discretion in favour of three other ships, two years before the case of the Asiatic Journ.-No. V.

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Astell came into question. To them the same rule had been applied as the hon. gentleman subsequently, and as it were incidentally noticed, though he dwelt chiefly upon the case of the Astell for reasons perhaps that could be explained, asking with an air of triumph, why there should be any departure from the principle of the permanent system in the mode of employing this particular ship? The answer was not difficult; and when the facts and circumstances of the case were fairly exhibited, they would deprive the hon. gentleman of all just ground of accusation. The ship Astell was built conformably to the law upon the bottom of another that had been lost, and which had been engaged at one fixed rate of war extraordinaries whereas the common practice was to settle the rate of war extraordinaries from voyage to voyage, according to the prices of stores at the time; and this was the only mode in which there could be any certainty or safety, because to settle one rate for six voyages when the prices of stores hardly ever remained the same for two years, was proceeding upon the principle of a lottery, and the owners might be subjected to ruinous loss, perhaps to a rate £8 or £10 per ton less than the ships received who had their war extraordinaries settled from voyage to voyage. This was found to be the case of the three ships above-mentioned, and they were relieved by being paid on the principle of the other ships. After having made this equitable concession to them, was it to be refused afterwards to the Astell, which was found to be in the same predicament, and then the only ship so circumstanced The court of directors thought not; they thought it was but equitable this ship should be put on the footing of all the rest, and if they had determined otherwise, the ship must have thrown up her contract. The directors however, acted in this matter with the sanction of the learned counsel whom the company then employed, namely, Mr. Adam, whose opinion was, that although the law had enjoined that the peace freight should be one fixed rate; it left the war contingencies to be settled according to the discretion of the court of directors, and Mr, Adam was not not a man likely to give a hasty opinion upon any case submitted to his consideration, although the hon. gentleman seemed disposed to question the one delivered on this occasion. But as far as he (the as far as Chairman) could judge, the opinion was a sound and just one, and indeed the case required no extraordinary discernment in any man conversant with the subject of it to come to the same conclusion. As far as he (the Chairman) could understand the act of parliament, the directors acted correctly on that occasion, and according to the powers the law vested in them VOL. I. 3 R

which powers warranted them to agree for the war extraordinaries either at one fixed rate, or to make a new settlement for them every voyage; and in consequence e of the opinion of Mr. Adam, the Astell was put upon the same footing with other ships. There were two circumstances relative to that ship which farther justified this concession. One was, that she was the representative of another ship that had been lost, which Tost ship had been engaged in former circumstances, and at a different period of time, when the effect produced by one fixed rate of war extraordinaries had not been experienced or contemplated as at all so unfavourable to the owners as it afterwards proved. The other circumstance was, that the Astell had not received the wár allowance paid to many other ships for building, which amounted to five or six pounds per ton. The Astell, as already observed, was then the only ship which was not paid the war extraordinaries from voyage to voyage according to the circumstances of the time, and every other ship originally engaged at one fixed rate for those extraordinaries having been put on the other footing, why should the same reasonable charge be refused to her?

But this and other things which had been mentioned, were of a subordinate nature, and should not occupy too much of the present discussion. The main question, which pressed for immediate consideration was what should be done respecting the case now submitted to the court? The proprietors had, in his mind, to chuse ope of two things before them. They must either discard the ships now in their service, and sustain in the first instance, the inconvenience, of hiring ships not so well adapted for the India trade, at a rate of freight formed by the present times, engaging also new ships in order permanently to supply the place of those thrown out of the company's employ; or, they must endeavour upon some equitable footing to retain the ships actually in the service. If they did the first thing-namely, discard the ships, insisting also upon the penalties, and prosecuting the owners for not sailing their ships, in order to recover the losses which the company might sustain by the breach of their contracts; the consequence would be, that they would ruin the owners: they would subject themselves to the necessity of taking up in the first instance, a class of ships not adapted to the service, and must pay more than they would now have to pay if they kept the present ships in their employ. This was the real and true state of the case; and without going into a detailed answer to all the statements and observations of the hon. gentleman, which neither time, nor the nature of the subject would now allow, he should only rely upon this short and real view of the case. The

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owners were undoubtedly in the power of the company by virtue of the act of parliament: The company might insist upon this, and on the failure of the owners demand the penalties they might also commence actions to recover damages for the other consequences of Wing the ships. If the company this course, still they would oblige the owners to lay up their ships, whatever penal consequences might result from the breach of their contracts. But what would be the situation of the company in the mean time? Instead of having the excellent class of ships which they had now in their service, such ships as could not be got any where else in Europe because no other trade employed ships of the like size and equipment, they would be obliged to take such ships, as other branches of trade could furnish, to carry on their trade to China and India. They would be obliged to take up with such shipping as they could get, whether it answered their purpose or not, and subject themselves to great inconvenience and difficulty; when they had ships admirably adapted to their trade within their reach, and ready to continue in their service at a less price, even than those of a worse quality, which the company must take up.

It might be very convenient for the hon. gentleman to go into details quite beside the question which the general court had to determine, but he had urged no one argument which could remove the court of directors from that broad ground on which they stood. It was upon the fair and unornamented ground which he (the Chairman) had candidly exhibited that this present measure was brought forward by the court of directors. They protested against the imputation of any private influence or sinister motives. It was from their anxiety to preserve this very system which was so much entitled to approbation, that the measure proceeded. There was nothing of private influence conceived in it. It was quite impossible to exercise now, such an influence as prevailed under the former shipping system, for every owuer acted separately for himself, and used his own discretion in the contracts he entered into. The court of directors had always been aware, that the return of peace after a long war, would be likely to produce such a difficulty as has now actually occurred. But it was impossible to prevent it. When one permanent rate of peace freight was fixed at the beginning of a ship's service, it was to be expected that after twelve or more years of uninterrupted war, the prices of stores must at the return of peace be much higher than they were before the war. Still this inconvenience in the system, and the measure to which it now led, were outweighed by the other great advantages of that

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