Government proposes to remove burdens on British shipping.
It cannot be denied that this very elaborate exposition of the state of merchant shipping completely cut the ground from under those Shipowners who still advocated Protection. They, however, went on cavilling “for a principle,” and contended that the Spanish and French trades for instance might become valuable to the British Shipowner if the Governments of France and Spain would adopt the liberal policy pursued by England towards them in this respect; whereas, under the existing restrictions, British Shipowners lost many valuable charters, and were prevented from completing voyages otherwise profitable. The Shipowners refused to allow the validity of the argument, that the British Shipowner carried on a greater business in the indirect trade with France and Spain than the French and Spanish Shipowners in the indirect trade with England, and that, therefore, retaliation would neither operate as an inducement to those countries to relax their system, nor afford material addition to the field of employment of British shipping. They contended that the commercial navy of this country was larger than that of France and Spain combined; that, therefore, the Shipowners of these countries had not the means of engaging in an oversea trade to the same extent as the Shipowners of England, and that, consequently, the superior energy of the British Shipowner ought not be pleaded as a barrier to an act of justice. Nor did it, in their opinion, follow that, because the engagement of the Spaniard and Frenchman in the indirect trade with England was not larger and more active than that of the British Shipowners in the indirect trade with France and Spain, there was no inducement to the Governments of those countries to relax the present restrictive system, and no prospect, in the event of such relaxation, of increased employment of British shipping in the direction indicated. In fact, the London Shipowners thought the argument was entirely the other way, and would not be convinced to the contrary, whatever relative prosperity they might enjoy.
Real value of the Coasting trade of the United States.
With regard to the Coasting trade, all parties were agreed that the Americans acted selfishly in denying to England the same reciprocity for the coasting trade, which she had unrestrictedly conceded to them. The Shipowners, however, by no means acquiesced in the opinion given by the Board of Trade, that “the value of the American Coasting trade had been greatly overestimated.” They said, and with reason, that it was an error to imagine that because San Francisco formed the limit of the United States’ coasting trade, the entrances and clearances at that port exhibited the entire amount of the trade along the American seaboard.
Magnanimity of England in throwing open her Coasting trade unconditionally not appreciated by the Americans.
It was, indeed, an evasion to say that the American coasting trade, meaning the western coast only, never afforded employment to more than 200,000 tons of American ships. The records of these pages afford proofs to the contrary. All mention of the trade between the ports of the Northern States and those of the Gulf of Mexico is, for some reason or other, suppressed. All the vast and lucrative carrying trade between New York and Boston, New Orleans and Mobile and Charleston, is studiously kept out of view; trades far more valuable than that of San Francisco and of the whole western coast, collectively. The argument, therefore, set up by the Board of Trade, “that the participation of the Californian trade, however desirable, cannot be regarded as a circumstance which could exercise any important influence on the shipping interests of Great Britain,” was altogether unsatisfactory. Magnanimous as it was of the English Legislature to throw open the foreign, as well as the colonial commerce and navigation of the Empire, and the coasting trade afterwards, without imposing any previous conditions, such a liberal policy has, evidently, been unappreciated by the Americans, who seem resolved to monopolise all advantages resulting from their geographical position.
FOOTNOTES:
[170] See ante, vol. ii. note, page 312.
[171] Timber freights from Quebec rose from 30s. per load, the ordinary rate, to 55s. Coal freights to Constantinople advanced from 20l. to 70l. per keel of twenty-one tons four cwt.; and freights from India, which had previously ranged from 50s. to 80s., ran up as high as 180s. per ton.
[172] The new law of admeasurement, which came into operation on the 1st of January, 1855, while it produced great improvement in the models of our ships, had the important advantage of creating very little difference in the gross tonnage of the Empire, on which so many dues are levied, and thus rendered unnecessary any change in the long-established scale of charges, which in many cases would have been altogether impracticable. For instance, 1100 vessels, large and small, which were taken promiscuously, measuring under the old law 248,842 tons, were found under the new law to measure 231,277 tons, showing a difference of only 7 per cent.