Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/616

 in the imports of grain, or to the remarkable increase in the exports of manufactures, or to the greatly extended consumption of coal at remote stations. In a word, while the bulky articles which require ships for their conveyance to distant parts of the world have enormously increased, the shipping of the world has been comparatively stationary during the past year, and the many losses and disasters at sea during 1860 have tended materially to diminish the already scanty supply of shipping necessary to conduct the oversea trade of the world. All this will, without doubt, right itself in time, but it will take one year, if not two years, to do so. In the mean time, it might so happen that the artisans of France may be thrown out of employment for the want of French ships to bring them those raw materials necessary to keep them employed; or, what will amount to nearly the same, the increased cost to the manufacturer of the raw material, through the laws of France compelling him to bring it in her ships, might be so great that he would be unable to compete in price with his rivals in other countries, and, consequently, be obliged to close his mills or his workshops, as the case might be, for want of remunerative employment.

Might I, therefore, venture to impress upon your Majesty the desirability, I may even say the necessity, of at least placing the carrying-trade between France and the possessions of Great Britain on the same footing as it now exists between the mother countries. Your people would be immense gainers by this change, and your Shipowners would not suffer, for, independent altogether of the facts which I have stated in regard to the advantages which they, as carriers, derive above all others from the policy of Free-trade, there will be for the next twelve months at least ample employment for the shipping of all nations. I cannot close this, I fear too lengthy a letter, without calling to your Majesty's attention a remarkable instance of the injury which even the Shipowners of that great maritime country, the United States, sustain by protection. While in 1856, 1857, and 1858, the tonnage owned in England increased 335,000 tons, the tonnage of America in those same years actually decreased 67,000 tons.

In a recent visit which I made to that country, I did not fail, in the many opportunities afforded me, to impress upon its Shipowners that they were more interested in the removal of all barriers to free intercourse than any other class of the community; for, as those barriers which they still maintain along their