Some eminent writers on commerce, among whom the late J. R. McCulloch[228] stands conspicuous, have doubted the utility of compulsory registration; but this system, in after years materially improved, has been of great service to the State, as well as to individual shipowners. Indeed the exigencies of trade alone required that English merchant vessels should be provided in time of war with legally authorised certificates, so that they might be at once distinguished from those of other nations. Besides, the incalculable amount of property entrusted to owners of vessels obviously requires that their ships should be identifiable by a proper system of registration; for there would be little or no security for the safe transport of merchandise unless the title to the ship as well as to the cargo were indisputably established by the certificates of register, and by the customs’ and clearance papers, which the ship was then by law required to carry.
American Registry Act.
From the earliest period of American independence, Congress[229] passed a registration measure corresponding almost exactly with that of Great Britain. The national privileges of trade were by it confined to ships built in America and belonging to and commanded by citizens of that country on the 16th of May, 1789, and continually thereafter, or which had been taken and condemned as prizes in war, or forfeited for a breach of the United States laws. Few nations have asserted the rights of neutral ships[230] with greater energy than the people of the United States; and these rights could not have been enforced except by a system of registration. But it is superfluous to waste time in asserting the advantages of registration, which, in all cases where it is honestly performed, may be deemed one of the most salutary regulations introduced by civilisation and law, and one, too, of material value for the repression of crime and piracy.
Treaty between France and England, 1786.
On 26th of September, 1786, a treaty of commerce and navigation between Great Britain and France[231] was concluded, whereby perfect freedom of navigation was mutually conceded; but before the expiration of twelve years, the stipulated period of its existence, one of the greatest political convulsions of modern times had overthrown the dynasty of the Bourbons, and France and England were again plunged into a more deadly war than had ever before been waged by these ancient and inveterate foes. England also formed treaties with Spain, Prussia, and Holland, and the treaty with Russia, which had been allowed to expire in 1786, was also then renewed.
Slave trade, and its profits.
Among numerous other matters, the slave-trade occupied a very considerable portion of the attention of Parliament and of the country during this period. By a return laid before Parliament in 1789, the number of slaves annually carried from the coast of Africa in British vessels was thirty-eight thousand; the number taken to the British West Indies, upon an average of four years, being estimated at twenty-two thousand five hundred.[232] Prior to the year 1760 no complete returns have been preserved of the number of ships thus employed; subsequently, however, it ranged from twenty-eight, measuring three thousand four hundred and seventy-five tons in the year 1761, to one hundred and ninety-two, measuring twenty thousand two hundred and ninety-six tons in 1776; but, during the war, from 1776 to 1783, this inhuman trade either languished, or the vessels formerly engaged in it were otherwise more profitably employed.[233] The majority of the slave-vessels were built expressly for the trade; and at the date of the report, 1786, from which we derive our information, six vessels were in course of construction, and about a dozen fitting out or ready for sea. A slave then cost from 8l. to 22l. in Africa, and realised in the West Indies from 28l. to 35l., the prices having about doubled during the previous century. In addition to the British import of slaves, the French carried away from Africa every year about twenty thousand; the Portuguese ten thousand; the Dutch four thousand; and the Danes two thousand; making a total of seventy-four thousand annually exported from Africa, including the thirty-eight thousand despatched in British vessels. A considerable portion of these found their way to the Spanish possessions. When after the restoration of peace with the colonies the London streets were filled with emancipated negroes, many of them, collected by an order of the 9th of December, 1786, were forwarded in British transports to Sierra Leone, where a settlement was formed.[234]
Trade between England and America and the West Indies re-opened.
Although the political connection of Great Britain with the United States of America had been violently rent asunder, there happily remained between the two countries the bonds of one common origin, language, religion, and mutual interest. No sooner had American independence been acknowledged than all prohibitory regulations made during the war were abolished. Indeed, for a time, no manifest or any other shipping document was required from any vessel of the United States arriving at or clearing out from a British port; and the Crown being meanwhile authorised to regulate the manner in which trade should be carried on, a royal proclamation was immediately issued on the 14th of March, 1783, for the admission, till further orders, into the ports of Great Britain, of any unmanufactured commodities, the produce of the United States, either in British or American ships, without the usual certificates, and on payment of the same duties as were payable on similar articles imported from British America. The same drawbacks and bounties were also allowed on goods coming from the United States as on those from the British possessions; and the benefit of the order was extended to all American vessels that had arrived since the 20th of January.
These concessions, however, neither gave satisfaction to the American shipowners, nor to the English sticklers for the Navigation Act in all its force. A controversy arose respecting the extent of commercial rights to be conceded permanently to the United States, the practical point in dispute at the time being whether the Navigation Act should be held to apply to American shipping as fully as it did to other foreign vessels, and should thus exclude them from the English West India Islands. But their claim to be treated upon a more favoured footing than other nations was deemed untenable, though an exemption in their favour was urged in this particular case upon the general grounds of expediency. The shipowners, however, of Great Britain upheld the Navigation Act as the palladium of their naval power, and urged that a people who had renounced their allegiance to the mother-country could have no right to any special favour. Much agitation was also raised by the West India planters, who asserted that the prosperity of those islands depended on an unrestricted intercourse with America; and as their influence was powerful in parliament, ministers were on the point of yielding to the clamour; at least they connived with the governors of some of the West India Islands in permitting the free access of American vessels to their ports.