Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/169



The shipowners, on the other hand, put forward their most practical and intelligent witnesses to prove that the repeal of the Navigation Laws would cause an immediate depreciation of thirty per cent. in the value of their property, and of shipping, generally, throughout the United Kingdom; that, if the British shipowner were deprived of his' privileges, already greatly curtailed by the system of reciprocity, it would be decidedly to his advantage to invest his capital in foreign ships, and to navigate them by foreign seamen: Englishmen, they alleged, would own, in conjunction with foreigners (if possible), foreign ships, in order to secure the privileges still attaching to foreign flags, since British ships would still be excluded from many foreign ports, even though the Navigation Laws were abrogated. It was shown, as they conceived incontestably, that a ship could be built at Dantzig at a much less cost than in England, and that, if the*