Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/71

 Bordeaux wines in any other than English, Irish, and Welsh bottoms, these vessels being manned with sailors wholly of their own countrymen, a law which was, two years afterwards, even further extended and enlarged, the reasons assigned being "that great minishing and decay hath been now of late time of the navy of this realm of England, and idleness of the mariners within the same, by the which this noble realm, within short process of time, without reformation be had therein, shall not be of ability, nor of strength and power, to defend itself." Of course such reasoning was then unanswerable; indeed, has been held to be so even in our own time. Accordingly it was enacted that no wines of Gascony or Guienne should be imported into England unless in ships belonging to the king (of which, by the way, his Majesty had a goodly number) or to his subjects; nay more, any such wines imported in foreign bottoms were to be forfeited.

Many arguments might, indeed, at that time have been urged in favour of these stringent laws, more especially as the policy of the Italian republics aimed at monopolising in their own ships the transport of all they required, and at rendering their ports the entrepôt for the supply of goods not merely for their own peoples, but for all other nations. Although a difference of opinion has ever existed as to the best means of attaining these objects, Henry VII. lays down sound principles of political economy and liberal sentiments with regard to the advantages to be derived from free intercourse with all nations, in his instructions to the commissioners appointed to negotiate treaties of commercial reciprocity with foreign countries. "The