Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/114

 hides brought from Marseilles to Rotterdam, not finding a market there, were taken back to Marseilles; and when sent thence to Liverpool, were seized as imported in a French bottom, and released only on the condition that they should be sent back to New York! Such interruptions of commerce, Mr. Ricardo rightly contended, were alike inconvenient and wasteful. He next pointed out discrepancies in the working of the Act, with the various Orders in Council made under it, asserting, at the same time, that freights were artificially enhanced by protection. He espoused, too, the cause of the colonists, who now demanded as a matter of justice, that trade should be as free in shipping as it was in sugar. Could, Mr. Ricardo demanded, any ground of political expediency or any national advantage be shown to justify the retention of these laws? He admitted that the authority of Adam Smith would be adduced against

permitted to land his cargo. "Why?" the Spaniard would inquire. "I understood you wanted wine." "So we do," the officer would reply. Then the Spaniard would say, "I will exchange my wine for your earthenware." "That will not do," replies the officer. "It must be brought by Frenchmen on a French ship." "But the French do not want your earthenware". "We cannot help that;" we must not let you violate our Navigation Laws" .]
 * [Footnote: by a custom-house officer, who would tell him that he could not be