In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much. The French are with equal advantage content, So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.

Canning replied with a speech nearly three hours long described by Lord Palmerston as "so powerful that it gave a decisive turn to the debate". Canning struck up friendships with the then-future Lord Liverpool as well as with Granville Leveson-Gower and John Hookham Frere.

George Canning FRS (11 April 1770 – 8 August 1827) was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.