Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/617

 coast retard their commerce, and consequently limit the exchange of the different articles produced in the various districts, the employment of their vessels must necessarily be more curtailed than it would otherwise be if greater facilities were afforded for the transmission of those articles which one district produces in greater abundance than another.

To those maritime questions I have long devoted my attention, and I have often been struck at the circuitous course which ships, by the laws which nations adopted, have been obliged to follow. The ocean was meant to be free to mankind, but one nation by its laws dictates the course which the ships of other nations must follow; another nation, by way of retaliation, lays down the only course which it will allow its competitors to adopt. Thus we see ships, for instance, allowed to follow one track with cargo, but compelled to return by the same track, in ballast. We see the wool which your own people require, instead of being imported, as it ought to be, direct from Australia to the ports of France, sent, by the Navigation Laws of France, to the ports of England, and from thence imported at greatly enhanced prices to the consumers. It is the same with the produce of India. Those lines of steamers belonging to England, which run weekly from Calcutta and Bombay, and all the great ports of the East to Great Britain, passing Marseilles and the other seaports of France, are not allowed to land, for the use of its people, the very articles of which they may be in urgent want. All experience has proved that while those restrictions do great injury to the commerce of all nations, they inflict the largest amount of injury upon the people of the nation that imposes them.

The feeble efforts of so humble an individual as myself, may be of little avail in the removal of those pernicious restrictions, but I will never cease those efforts till the ocean, which was meant for the use of mankind in general, is as free as the waves which roll over it, and the gale which hurries them along. And if your Majesty would grant me your powerful aid by making one step in the direction I have so imperfectly ventured to point out, I feel that other nations will follow the example of a Sovereign so enlightened and so exalted, and thus I may live to see the object I have so anxiously in view crowned with success.

I have, &c.,

(Signed).