England's protective laws in Cromwell's time, and say that as by them she then established her mercantile marine, we should endeavor to regain what we have lost, by a return to the policy of that period, from which by the by, we have varied only in a small degree. Upon the same principle we should abandon steam, which, like the progress made by our competitors, in free trade, is merely another improvement in the train of advancing civilization. When such men talk of the steamship enterprises which have triumphed in spite of their antediluvian ideas, they tell us that England supported the Cunard line by subsidies, and thus put her shipbuilding on a firm basis. The inference is that we should go back to 1840, build some 1200 ton wooden paddle steamers and subsidize them.

That this is no idle supposition is shown by the fact that long after England had abandoned that class of vessels in favor of iron screw steamships, we did build and subsidize the unwieldly tubs, some of which are still in the employment of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. We became the laughing stock of the rest of the world who classed us with the Chinese, and our steamships with Chinese junks. The Japanese just emerged from barbarism exceeded us in enterprise.

They now own one line of fifty-seven steamships, more of them engaged in foreign trade than all the steamships we thus employ upon the ocean! At a late day we did commence the use of iron screw steamships of such description and at such cost as one or two domestic ship-yards chose to supply, and thus we were as far from resisting competition as ever.

Now, if there was no ocean traffic of which we should be deprived, the hardship to our shipowners would be comparitively trifling, although the tax upon ships of inferior workmanship and higher cost would, like all the operations of the tariff, be felt by the community at large. This is evident enough.

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, for example, in order to pay expenses, to say nothing of profits, are obliged to charge a higher fare to passengers, to exact higher rates of freight from shippers and to demand a larger postal contract from government than they could afford to take, if by being allowed to supply themselves with ships in the cheapest markets of the world and of the best quality that competing

shipyards could turn out, they might save one-third of their cost and have better steamers. If, therefore, we had only the coasting trade to consider, we might say that the prohibitory statute would not pinch the shipowner particularly, but its evil would be generally distributed. We are actually carrying on the coasting trade in this way, and as it is all that shipowners have left, of necessity they oblige the community to pay them the excess of cost in order that protection may inure to the benefit of the few monopolists who build iron steamships and are able to force the quality and price upon their unwilling purchasers. We can, and do without considering the pockets of the majority, make whatever laws we please for our own coasting trade.

But now let us look at the ocean rolling from continent to continent, unfettered by the chains with which "protection" can bind the lands and coasts upon its borders appropriated by nations to themselves. It is independent of an American tariff and of them all, as it was in the days when—

"It rolled not back when Canute gave command."

It welcomes the people of all nations on equal terms to its bosom, and Commerce is the swift-winged messenger ever travelling from shore to shore. Look at it, and if our eyes could scan it all at once, we should see the smoke darkening the air as it rises from hundreds of chimneys, telling of fires that make the steam for propelling the mighty engines that bring the great leviathans of commerce almost daily into our ports and into those whom we supply and by whom we are supplied with the products of mutual labor.

The flags of all nations are at their peaks—the British, German, Dutch, Danish, Belgian, French—but among the three hundred and more there are only four that carry the stars and stripes, and these were put afloat mainly at the cost of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Three hundred steamships, employing fifty thousand men earning a million and a half of dollars monthly; these men supporting and educating families, and themselves becoming reserves for their respective countries to call upon for naval service in time of war! Look at the ports from which these vessels wherever built, now hail, and which they enrich by the capital they distribute. Behold the warehouses, repairing shops, foundries, and other various industries connected with these enterprises, and the shipowners engaged in promoting them pursuing a legitimate business.

Then look at home. First calculate the sum of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars that has been annually paid by us to those foreigners for transporting ourselves and our merchandise. Then go back in memory to the time when in the days of sailing ships, our packets almost monopolized the ocean on account of the skill of our officers and seamen.

Reflect that if a policy of ordinary foresight had prevailed in our national councils when these sailing ships were killed off by the competition of the newly-invented iron screw, their old commanders and their noble crews would have kept their employment, and as they died would have been succeeded by men as worthy as themselves, adding to our revenue in time of peace, and, when needed, supplying a navy now

maintained at an immense expense—God save the mark!—for the protection of an extinct merchant service!

See how few American steamship offices, how few repairing shops we have need of for these foreigners, who employ their own agents instead of our merchants, and naturally endeavor to do all the work required upon their vessels at home. Then search for the American shipowners engaged in trade beyond the seas. Look for them in their deserted counting-rooms of South street, in New York. As their old captains have retired in poverty and are begging for such offices as that of inspector or port warden, or for same subordinate place in the Custom-House, while the seamen are mostly dead with none to come after them, so South street is abandoned by its honorable merchants, who have, in too many cases, moved up to Wall street, and become gamblers by being deprived of their original business. When you have done all this, finish up your investigation by estimating how much sooner the rebellion might have been overcome, if in years past we had owned our share of the world's shipping, and multiply the $130,000,000 of freight money we annually pay to foreigners by the number of years we have been engaged in this suicidal policy of protecting them in earning money that of right belonged to our own people!

Having sketched this result of American legislation, let us glance at that of other nations in late years for it is as useless to dwell upon what it was a century or two centuries ago as it would be to study the navigation laws of the Phœnicians, or to inquire if Solomon exacted that the ships bringing his spices from India and his gold from Ophir should be

of Jewish construction. Old things did not pass away and all things did not fairly become new until the discovery of gold in California and Australia revolutionized values, created universal national intercourse, and by thus giving a sudden impetus to commerce, made the carrying trade an industry of far greater importance than it had ever been before.

At that epoch, our restrictive laws were productive of no harm to us, because it so happened that most of the business of