Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/93

 energy of her people, the security of property, and the equality of taxation, could secure for England either her commercial or her manufacturing superiority; and, still less, could they comprehend how much such causes as these had to do with her maritime supremacy. They were equally unable to discover to how great an extent the prosperity of these interests and of shipping were mutually dependent on each other, ships being really the adjuncts only of commerce, as without it there would be no reason for their existence.

But after much discussion reciprocity treaties were concluded by Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson with several Continental Powers, the object of these statesmen being to hold out the right hand of fellowship to other nations, and to surrender in exchange for some concession on their part the more stringent conditions of our Navigation Laws. The earliest of these treaties was with Prussia, on the 2nd April, 1824: on the 16th June, we made another with Denmark; on the 29th September, 1825, with the Hanseatic Republics of Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg; on the 16th January, 1826, with France, and on the 26th December, of the same year, with Mexico. Various other treaties followed; opening, on certain terms of reciprocity, the ports of Great Britain to the ships of the nations with whom they were made; but reserving to her own ships, as a rule and with jealous care, her colonial ports.

During the Middle Ages, when foreigners were too frequently subjected to unjust treatment, treaties were, no doubt, necessary for their protection. For