The reason of the decline exhibited in the accounts for 1858 must, therefore, be sought from other causes; and, probably, the commercial history of the previous few years is amply sufficient to afford the required explanation; moreover, any loss we might, thereby, have sustained was more than counterbalanced by the extraordinary development of the foreign and colonial trades of the United Kingdom during the ten years preceding 1859.[192]
Probable causes of the depression in England and America.
The commercial crisis, however, which occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, at the close of 1857, necessarily operated injuriously upon the progress of English trade, and consequently on English shipping. It must be also remembered that the Russian war, and, subsequently, the disturbances in British India, created a large and abnormal demand for tonnage, which ceased with the termination of those temporary causes; and, as tonnage employed exclusively in the Government transport service, does not appear in the preceding account, it is probable that, during 1858, there was a still greater check to the demand for tonnage than is therein expressed.
The temporary depression was, however, by no means confined to the shipping of the United Kingdom, as we have shown; similar symptoms had manifested themselves in other maritime countries.[193]
American jealousy and competition.
Although the competition of British shipping in steam navigation had been the subject of loud complaint in America, it will be found that the decline in the building and employment of British shipping in 1858 was not so great in proportion as that which was indicated by the annual accounts of the imports and exports of the United Kingdom for that year.[194]
Inconclusive reasoning of Board of Trade.
The Board of Trade argued, but very inconclusively, with reference to the free supply of foreign tonnage for the requirements of British trade, that if, during the exceptional circumstances of recent years, British commerce had been obliged to depend on British shipping alone to the extent which was necessary before 1850, an artificial stimulus would have been given to the demand for British ships, which could not have been sustained, and that, therefore, the whole weight of the reaction would have fallen upon British shipping, instead of being diffused, as was the case, among the whole tonnage employed in British trade.
Upon this preposterous conclusion no argument can be raised: as well might it be said that a man ought not to be individually prosperous, lest the revulsion of adversity should be too great for him, especially if not diffused among his rivals in trade. At last, Government arrived at this conclusion about the condition of merchant shipping, that they could not attribute the actual depression of British shipping to the effects of increased competition with foreign shipping consequent on the repeal of the Navigation Laws; but that, considering the importance of the shipping interest in a national point of view, it was desirable that all partial and unequal burdens to which the shipping interest was still subject should be removed as soon as practicable. In this spirit, the repeal of the differential duty on foreign timber as the raw material of shipbuilding, and the abolition of passing tolls and other local burdens, which were still maintained without any equivalent in the shape of services rendered to shipping, were questions which deserved immediate consideration.
Compulsory reciprocity no longer obtainable.