Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/626



In 1850 there were entered and cleared at our ports of British shipping, 9,442,544 tons.

In 1861 there were entered and cleared at our ports of British shipping, 15,420,532 tons.

The increase being 2,772,549 tons during nine years of Protection, while it was no less than 5,977,988 tons during eleven years of Free-trade.

But experience has proved that restrictive laws are injurious to all countries which maintain them. It is verified in your our own case. See what the trade of the Tagus has become to that of the Thames or Mersey, though the former affords much greater natural facilities for shipping and commerce. It has long been apparent in Spain; and though the wealth and great natural resources of that country are now in course of development by means of railway communication, its intercourse with other countries is still very limited, and must remain so while they continue to maintain high differential duties, which yield little or no revenue, and seriously curtail their intercourse with the world.

Even France is a striking example of the loss a nation sustains by endeavouring by means of Protection to shut herself up within herself.

It is thus evident that every restriction a country imposes upon its freedom of intercourse with other countries—while it curtails the operations of its merchants, and enhances the price of the raw material to its manufacturers, increasing also the cost of the commodity to the people—must necessarily curtail the employment of its Shipowners.

These restrictive laws often compel merchants to buy what they require, at greatly enhanced prices, articles not produced in the country from whence they are imported; as is the case in your importations from England of cotton, sugar, coffee, hemp, jute, silk, foreign wool, and numerous other articles, all arising in a great measure from the fact that the differential duties imposed by your Navigation Laws oblige you to import foreign manufactures or produce, either in your own ships or in the ships of the country where the articles were produced. Consequently the people of Portugal pay much higher prices than we do for almost every article they require to import from other