Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/280

 and vexatious negotiations. Out of a score of reciprocity treaties to which England was a party, there were only four which contained the "favoured-nation" clause; and it was idle to expect that, through the instrumentality of any such compacts, genuine or extensively reciprocal advantages could be established as between England and the other nations of the world. It might be difficult, if not wholly impracticable, to realise the principle of reciprocity in the case of tariffs, but it was not so difficult to apply the principle to shipping. Nothing was so easy as to say, we will relax our Navigation Laws, and make certain arrangements with respect to our shipping interests, on the express condition that other countries will adopt similar arrangements and similar relaxations in our regard.

If these views were unsatisfactory to the Shipowners, it is certain they were still more so to the extreme Free-trade party. The question had now resolved itself into the expediency of reciprocity, conditional legislation, and retaliation. The extreme Free-traders demanded liberty of navigation without any legislative restriction whatever, and the plan of Government conferring a power of retaliation, though one little likely to be resorted to, was of course the plan least objectionable to the Free-traders. They contended that the Bill as it stood enabled the country to receive concessions from foreign countries by making concessions to them; but, if Mr. Bouverie's motion was carried, they asserted that, retaining in our hands the power of retaliation, we should be compelled to resort to such measures whenever equality was disturbed.