Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/481

 story, which has been frequently told, and those persons who, in this instance, used it as an argument, did not perceive that it was double-edged. Nor was it, indeed, conclusive, as, whatever the motives which prompted the arguments of the partisans of Free-trade, these arguments were good and sound in themselves. Besides, there were many shipowners in France in favour of Free-trade who had no other interests to serve.

For example, the late M. de Coninck, who was a large shipowner, in his evidence states that he had given up every other branch of business except ship-owning—being at the time, as he remarked, "nothing but a carrier" (charretier). In other respects his evidence was equally frank and straightforward. The cause, he deliberately told the Commissioners, the real cause of the complaints of the Protectionist Shipowners was not loss, properly speaking, but a mere diminution in their profits; this loss, certainly, had, he as frankly admitted, been reduced by competition to an average rate, inferior to that of the palmy days of Protection, during which, he added, the Shipowners obtained unreasonably large profits at the expense of the community. M. de Coninck then gave happy illustrations of the loss so called of which they so loudly complained. "Formerly, and in my time," he said, "it was considered that a vessel should clear herself in three voyages! That was the golden age of shipowners; but there is