The question, however, of the expediency of requiring foreign Powers, having colonial possessions, to reciprocate every advantage to us, which Great Britain had accorded unconditionally to them, though, commercially, when compared with other branches of commerce, unimportant, was one which demanded peculiar attention, as it was, and still is, a source of great annoyance, in that it creates a feeling that we have been very illiberally, if not unjustly, dealt with by these Powers. British Shipowners who, carried on the restricted and scarcely tolerated intercourse with the colonies of France, Spain, and Portugal, found their ships placed at an immense disadvantage, in the unequal competition they had to encounter, while they had the mortification to see foreign ships resort to our own colonies and secure much higher freights than our own ships when chartered to a port in Europe.[203]
For instance, it was given in evidence that Spanish vessels were chartered in English ports to Manilla at 3l. or 4l. per ton, while the British vessel could not obtain 30s. per ton. From the Mauritius to Europe a French ship, enjoying the option of both the British and French markets, obtained a freight for sugar of 3l. 10s. per ton at a time when English ships were obliged to accept 10s. per ton. Thus, in all our colonies and possessions, French, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels[204] could generally procure a freight greatly in excess of that obtained by British ships, as the foreign national flag secured for them, on arrival at a port of call in England, the advantage of our markets, with the option of sending on the cargo to the respective countries of Europe to which the national flag belonged, but from which markets such produce was excluded by heavy differential duties, if conveyed thither in British ships.
Want of energy on the part of the English Foreign Office.
The Committee naturally felt that a sense of justice demanded that our Shipowners should, as far as practicable and consistent with the interests of the community, be placed on equal terms in the race of competition, and that, whatever difficulties might stand in the way of having recourse to retaliatory measures, there had been, they regretted to state, an apparent apathy on the part of the executive government, in remonstrating with those nations which then excluded our vessels from their trade; in other words, that the Foreign Office had not employed the influence it might have exercised to secure, by diplomatic negotiation, the advantages of reciprocity.
Rights of belligerents.
As the question of belligerent rights at sea was one which deeply affected alike the British Shipowner in the prosecution of his business and the general interests of Great Britain, the Committee devoted their especial attention to the evidence advanced on this important question.
Privateering abolished in Europe;
In the recent war with Russia, England, as we have already incidentally noticed, when she formed an alliance with France, agreed with that country to waive her right to confiscate an enemy’s goods on board neutral ships as also neutral goods found on board an enemy’s, so long as they were not, in either case, contraband of war. This mutual but provisional waiver of belligerent rights placed the allies in harmonious action, and, practically, countenanced the principle that “free ships make free goods.” Upon the return of peace, as I have explained in a previous portion of this work, the declaration of Paris of April, 1856, signed by Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey gave a formal sanction to this principle. Privateering was also abolished.
America, however, declining to accept this proposal.
Views of the Committee thereon,