Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/25

 comfort, beauty, and speed, the vessels of the present day immeasurably surpass those of any other period. Modern appliances in their propulsion, while altering the mode in which commercial pursuits are conducted, have also materially changed the seats and centres of maritime commerce. Changes such as these necessarily require to be fully described, and their results carefully recorded.

As the ports of Great Britain are now free to the vessels of all nations, it will be my duty to explain the nature of the navigation laws of Cromwell and of the reciprocity treaties of Huskisson, and to show how, step by step, all barriers to free navigation have been removed. The fallacy of endeavouring to enrich ourselves by the ruin of our neighbours will be exposed, and, from the experience of the past, I shall hope to inculcate lessons of use for the future.

Ample materials are to be found for the elucidation of most of these subjects, and there can be no excuse to plead, beyond my own incapacity, if I fail to produce a work which shall hereafter be useful for reference, especially with regard to the merchant vessels of modern times. Though the enterprising traders of Tyre extended their commercial intercourse to all parts of the Mediterranean and even to the Northern and the Erythræan Seas, yet her merchants, "who were princes," and her traffickers, who were "the great men of the earth," have left no records of their vast commerce, nor of the vessels which were engaged in it. No mercantile man appears to have written