Note 37 — Chapter IV

I daresay at that time Lord Russell had not studied the question sufficiently. I arrive at this conclusion from a note I received from his Lordship in the present year (1875), in which he says, referring to the repeal of the Navigation Laws:—“I felt convinced by the reasoning of all writers, of whom the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcote, was one of the most able, that the Navigation Laws ought to be repealed. I was not frightened by Lord Derby’s sinister predictions, and events have proved me right.” Sir Stafford Northcote at the time was, I think, private secretary to Mr. Labouchere, the President of the Board of Trade under Lord John Russell’s Administration, and it is curious to learn that his Lordship, then the Prime Minister and leader of the great Whig party, should have been made a convert to the necessity of further progress by the young Conservative. Of course these writings could not have been read by Lord Russell at the time when he made the “declaration” to which I refer in the text.