What was the petition of london merchants

That in the year , such parts of the said Act as imposed Duties on Glass, Red and White Lead, Painters' Colours, Paper, Pasteboard, Millboard, and Scaleboard, were repealed, when the trade to America soon revived, except in the article of Tea, on which a Duty was continued to be demanded on its importation into America , whereby that branch of our commerce was nearly lost.

By the operation of these and other laws the minds of his Majesty' s subjects in the British Colonies have been greatly disquieted; a total stop is now put to the export trade with the greatest and most important part of North America ; the publick revenue is threatened with a large and fatal diminution; your Petitioners with grievous distress, and thousands of industrious Artificers and Manufacturers with utter ruin.

Under these alarming circumstances, your Petitioners receive no small comfort from a persuasion that the Representatives of the people, newly delegated to the most important of all trusts, will take the whole of these weighty matters into their most serious consideration; and your Petitioners humbly crave this Honourable House that they will enter into a full and immediate examination of that system of commercial policy which was formerly adopted and uniformly maintained, to the happiness and advantage of both countries, and will apply such healing remedies as can alone restore and establish the commerce between Great Britain and her Colonies on a permanent foundation.

And your Petitioners also humbly pray that they may be heard, by themselves or Agents, in support of this Petition. He should be very sorry to take upon himself the consequences of exposing the situations of private Merchants to publick view, especially at this juncture; but, if they really desired an inquiry into their affairs, he himself would give his time, his labour, and every possible assistance to it; but hoped such an inquiry might not be made use of to defeat every good intention, and clog every salutary measure that might be proposed in the present Committee; he should therefore recommend it to the House to appoint a separate Committee for the consideration of the Merchants' Petition, and for that purpose move an amendment, to leave out, between the word "of" and the word "Committee," the word "the," and insert "a" instead thereof; and to leave out the words "to whom it is referred to consider of the several Papers which were presented to the House by the Lord North , upon Thursday last, by his Majesty' s command.

He proceeded to shew how materially the trade and commerce with America ought to be considered before any decisive steps were taken, and declared himself totally ignorant that the Committee appointed for the 26th, were to take into consideration the papers only which lay on the table; he insisted that every information possible would add to the despatch, and not to the delay of a reconciliation; that as the noble Lord North had denied them the opinions of persons on the spot, the Committee could not receive more material information than from the Merchants trading thither, who were greatly interested in the welfare of the Colonies; that if there was not time sufficient to settle the American business, was not the noble Lord in fault in adjourning a month to eat mince-pies and drink Christmas ale, when so material a question was depending?

He called the proposed Committee a Coventry Committee, in allusion to a well known practice by which a troublesome person is voted to be sent to Coventry, whereby, without turning him out of company, he is wholly excluded from all attention; he may be ridiculed and laughed at, and cannot interfere in his own defence.

He also called it a Committee of Oblivion, consigning every thing the Merchants could allege to entire oblivion. He congratulated the Minister on such a friend as Sir William ; the Merchants on such an able and powerful advocate; the Cabinet on such a Counsellor; the right honourable gentleman himself on such a patron; and the King and Parliament on the happiness of having so respectable a person in a situation to reciprocally impart the desires and wishes of either party to each other.

He prophesied the most salutary effects from so happy a beginning. He compared the right honourable gentleman to Sampson , and the Ministers, and the friends of the Declaratory Act, and all the Revenue Acts, to the Philistines ; and supposed himself to be involved in the ruin which must follow from pulling down the pillars which had supported the system, of destructive policy and oppression, which the right honourable gentleman contended ought to have been resisted.

In a word, he turned, twisted, metamorphosed, and represented every thing which the right honourable gentleman had advanced into so many ridiculous forms, that the House was kept in a continued roar of laughter. They are not bound by the same double monopoly; they navigate in what ships they please, and consume what manufactures they please. Our interest in their prosperity is very indirect, and comparatively remote. Indeed the wealth they acquire, and the Strength they attain, are frequently used, not for, but against us.

The transfer of any branch of trade, therefore, from our own colonies to foreign nations, is an act of the highest impolicy, as well as of injustice towards our fellow subjects. So rapid has been the improvement of the British colonies in North America under this trade, which we are now called upon to destroy, that I understand their population has been trebled since that trade was first opened, by our being excluded from the ports of the Baltic.

It is stated to me upon good authority, that Upper and Lower Canada actually contain between, five and six hundred thousand inhabitants. The felling of timber is not, as has been said, an injurious employment, that retards; agriculture. On the contrary, it promotes it. Land must be cleared before it can possibly be cultivated.

The mode formerly practised, was that of girdling the trees, as it is called; that is, cutting off a slip of the bark all round them, to prevent the sap from rising, and setting fire to them when they were sufficiently dry to burn; but since the timber trade has brought them into value, instead of being burned, they are sold. Thus the great difficulty under which the new settler formerly laboured, of finding means of subsistence till his land became productive, has been done away, and the progress of agriculture accelerated, instead of being retarded, by the timber trade.

It may farther be observed, that in the British provinces in North America, the land is covered with frost and snow seven months out of the twelve, and all agricultural occupations are of course entirely suspended. You can now sponsor your favorite page on Revolutionary War and Beyond. Click below for information. Privacy Sitemap Citations Contact. You can read a copy of the New York merchants' non-importation agreement here. You can learn more about the history of the Stamp Act here.

Like This Page? Facebook Comments people have commented on this page. To guard against this evil, which was productive at once of individual injustice and national injury, the whole capital of the country ought to be assessed for the discharge of the public debt, so that no more capital should be allowed to go out of the country without paying its fair proportion of that debt.

The execution of tin's plan might he attended with difficulty, but then the importance of the object was worthy of an experiment to overcome every possible difficulty. The whole of the plan through which he proposed the payment of the public debt, might in his view be carried into effect within four or five years. For the discharge of the public debt, he proposed that checks should be issued upon the government to each purchaser, which checks should be kept distinct from the ordinary circulating medium of the country, but should be received by the government in payment of taxes.

Thus the debt might be gradually liquidated while the government continued gradually receiving the assessments upon capital to provide for that liquidation. He would not, however, dwell farther upon this chimerical project, as he understood it was considered by every one except himself, but proceed to the consideration of the petition, his hon. But his hon. This removal must, indeed, take place by slow degrees, entwined as they were with the general system of the trade of the country.

But still great good might be expected from the investigations of such a committee, who would, he hoped, enter particularly into the consideration of the corn laws. Now he, on the contrary, thought that it would be much more for the advantage of the Bank itself, to make the payments in the order already settled; because such payments being made gradually would serve to break the fall, and prepare the Bank for the complete resumption of metallic payments.

The only modification, indeed, which he deemed desirable on this subject was, that the Bank should be called upon permanently to pay its notes in bullion, instead of coin; for he could not conceive the policy of incurring the expense of coining gold merely for the purpose of the currency, which could be answered as well, if not more conveniently, by paper.

The only object to be provided for in this case was, that the real value of the paper should be equal to its denominative value, according to a settled and universal standard of value, or according to its nominal amount in coin.

It would perhaps be better to take one branch of this great question at a time than to enter into the whole of it at once. The freedom of trade was, no doubt, a sound principle in theory, but gentlemen were not generally aware of the difficulties which presented themselves, when an attempt was made to carry that principle into practice.

The distress of the country, at present, he attributed to over speculation, over importation, and over manufac- ture. He differed, therefore, from the hon.

But how did the fact stand? Why, that in the cotton trade, the manufacturers of which were the most distressed at present, we were enabled to undersell all the foreign manufacturers in their own market. What, then, became of the hon. The people engaged in manufactures were no doubt suffering hardships, which every good man must deplore. But while they suffered from low wages, and especially in Scotland, it was to be recollected, that their wages were better than the same class of manufacturers received in Germany and America; for the distress of trade was universal, and this formed the aggravation of our distress.

When the people were in distress, and discontented in , coercive measures were adopted, but no steps were taken to relieve distress or remove the cause of discontent. Upon the recurrence of distress and disaffection in and , coercive measures alone were again resorted to; and now, in , the same course was to be followed.

But after such recent experience, was it wise to persevere in such a system? Was it no disrespect to eighty of the most considerable merchants of London to say that they belonged to the anti-bullion party, and were influenced by such feelings alone in their application to that House? Had his hon. It was plain indeed that his hon. Had he, without even reading the petition, looked only to the signatures, he would have found in them a sufficient guarantee of their respectability—he would have found amongst them also some of the most respectable supporters of the bullion principle as any members in that House.

He could mention the name of one, Mr. M'Caulay, who though not in general disposed to the views of Opposition, had, from the commencement, entertained the soundest views on that question. There were others of the petitioners who were formerly members of that House, who had been members of the very bullion committee. It would appear also, that the House of Commons was not the only House in which divisions existed, for he believed, that the hon.

But it was said, why delay the presentation of the petition to this day, when the House was so near to the adjournment? There was this good reason, this natural solution of the delay—that the petitioners waited under the hope that parliament would have done something to meet existing difficulties, without their intervention. He agreed with them that the attention of parliament ought to be speedily directed to the question, and having said so, he took the present opportunity of stating in answer to applications made to him as well by hon.

He was induced to that decision from the result of his exertions three years ago, when his proposition was met by a motion to read the other orders of the day.

Besides, it was his conviction, that any proposition for such a change in the commercial interests of the country, as was suited to the altered state of our political relations with other nations, could be attended with no beneficial effect, if undertaken by any person not connected with the administration.

It required the government to bend its whole attention to the subject.