Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/201

 foreign States do not possess any colonies. But, even if they had anything to offer in return, he had little faith in "reciprocity;" because every nation, ''except England'', appears to exhibit, with respect to its maritime commerce, an intense feeling of nationality, and a fixed determination to support its commercial marine. Sweden, he said, admits any article used in the construction and equipment of Swedish-built ships duty free, and remits to such vessels, for the first year after they are built, the export duties on goods charged to others. Russia adopted a somewhat similar policy by exempting all vessels built in that country from the payment of her port-charges, for the first three years after they were launched. But Mr. Young failed to see that, while all such concessions as these must be made good by extra taxes on the people of the respective countries, they were at the same time prejudicial to their own shipping, in that they encouraged the production of cheap and inferior vessels.

Numerous arguments of a similar character were adduced, some based on facts, others on conjectures; and not a few adverted to heavy losses the British shipowner contemplated from causes which never had and never could have any real existence. Prussia, for instance, he said, confines the trade in the importation of salt to her own ships, which was true; America, invariably, gave the preference to her own ships, a statement either conjectural or, in some degree, supported by the fact that her merchants often found it to their interest as traders, and, not through any feeling of "intense nationality," to employ on certain trades their own ships in pre