Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/479

 Although this Committee, which sat early in the year 1870, never concluded its labours, its minutes are interesting and instructive, from the depositions and discussions they embodied, and, more especially, from the important fact, that not a few even of the Shipowners themselves, who had previously doubted the policy of Free-trade as applicable to their own interests, had, within the previous five years, become converts to the advantages to be derived from unfettered commerce. But the larger portion of them were, as, in fact, Shipowners have long been in all countries, Protectionist. They contended that the French commercial marine was both absolutely and comparatively in a state of decline, caused, as they argued, mainly, by the abolition of the protective duties, which they held were necessary to prevent them from being ruined by foreign competition. Among the various causes they alleged, as rendering them unable to compete successfully with the vessels of other nations, was the want of "bulky freights," in consequence of which their ships had frequently to leave France in ballast, or with incomplete cargoes; and, moreover, that "France, being at the western border of Europe, English, German, and other northern vessels, called at her ports, when not fully laden, to complete their outward cargoes, and compete for French freight with French shipping."

On the other hand, the partisans of Free-trade denied that French shipping had declined either absolutely or in comparison with the commercial marine of other countries. While conceding the point that the rates of freight had diminished, they maintained that such was the case in all other parts