Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/467

 Practically, thirty-five out of thirty-six millions of the nation (for I presume that not more than one million of the inhabitants of France depend for their living, directly or indirectly, upon its shipping) were paying for the support of the remaining thirty-sixth million.

Nor does this payment, which their Navigation Laws so long enforced, seem to have been of any advantage to the favoured class for whom it was made. The shipping of France did not increase. On the contrary, it actually decreased during the whole period when these laws were enforced with the utmost rigour. While, in the year 1787, France employed 164,000 tons of native shipping in her trade with foreign countries, she had, forty-three years afterwards, only 156,000 tons. In her colonial trade, which was confined entirely to her own ships, she employed 114,000 tons of French shipping at the former period, and only 102,000 tons in the year 1860. But the most complete answer to those persons who desired still to retain the Navigation Laws was the remarkable fact that, while the protected branches of her shipping trade decreased, there was a steady and not inconsiderable increase in those branches of it, where her ships had to enter into competition with the vessels of other nations.

Though the motion which the House of Commons had adopted was in favour of a Treaty, that mode of negotiation presented so many objections that, nine months after it had been passed, when Lord Russell furnished me with an introduction to Lord Cowley, it was arranged that we should endeavour to induce the French Government to consider this