Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/202

 *ference to those of any other nation. He further alleged that British shipowners would be irretrievably ruined by the admission of foreign ships, an assertion, of course, speculative, or purely imaginary. While maintaining that the evils of the Navigation Laws had been greatly overrated, he thought the advantages of these restrictive laws were equally exaggerated. He, however, attached the very greatest importance to the "Long Voyage clause," considering that it was far from clear that the interests of the country required its repeal, or that it could be safely repealed without the most injurious consequences to British navigation; in a word, he thought no other clause in the Navigation Act so essential to the maintenance of British navigation.

He could not, however, fail to see that the impossibility of bringing American cotton from Havre, cochineal from Teneriffe, or hides from Buenos Ayres (about which great complaints had been raised), occasioned great inconvenience. The cochineal from Teneriffe was no doubt, as explained elsewhere, absurdly exaggerated as a grievance, but it involved other articles, and could not be maintained on principle. Mr. Young, therefore, to remedy this evil, suggested a modification of the third clause of the Navigation Act, by introducing some words with respect to the produce of distant quarters of the world, as that which regulated by the second clause the importations from Europe; namely, by the limitation of the restriction to certain articles to be specifically enumerated; the enumerated articles being made to comprise all those bulky commodities, the retention of the importation of which to British shipping was