Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/484

 Conservative principles, and are, naturally, prone to seize on any statement in favour of their own views without inquiring very minutely into its soundness.

Although an impression prevails that the spirit of Protection took deeper root, than it had previously done in the French Legislative Assembly, after the terrible disasters of the war with Germany, the truth is that it only manifested itself owing to the pressure exerted by M. Thiers when he came into power on that memorable occasion. The spirit of the Assembly was still as much in favour of freedom of commerce as it had been in 1860, when it passed its famous commercial treaty with England. But the enormous drain on the resources of France, together with other causes, and the then all-powerful influence of M. Thiers, who, throughout his long life, has been an honest Protectionist in its most original form, inspired the Assembly with a financial policy intended to husband those resources and to make the most of them, but, being timorous and narrow-minded in its conception, it was by no means calculated to attain the object in view. That such was the case we see most clearly in the system adopted by the New Assembly with respect to foreign commerce, and even more especially, in its relations with the mercantile marine of other countries. That Assembly, in its wisdom, decided that the commercial treaties between England, on the one hand, and Belgium, on the other, should be revised from a Protectionist point of view, so as to return to the old system. Happily, however, a proviso was introduced into the new law which was only in conformity with the spirit of the