I have read with no ordinary interest the letter you did me the honour to address me on the 17th instant, and I shall be happy to forward the object your Government has in view by every means in my power. So far as I am concerned, you have merely to name the time when my presence is again required in Paris. In regard to other witnesses, the publication of your letter to me would enable you to obtain a greater amount and variety of evidence than could possibly be obtained through my own unaided exertions. I am glad your Government has decided upon an open inquiry, for thus all the important facts bearing upon the subject can be brought to light. The knowledge of these facts will greatly facilitate the inquiry about to be instituted. For instance, I dare say your Shipowners think (as our Shipowners thought in 1849) that any material relaxation of the Navigation Laws of France would ruin them. The arguments used against the repeal of our laws in 1849 were very plausible, but not very profound; for what are the facts? The repeal of our Navigation Laws came into operation on the 1st January, 1850; the aggregate tonnage of the merchant navy of the British empire at that time was 4,232,962 tons. It had risen from 2,681,276 tons in 1815. So that the increase, under the guardian care of the State, had in the previous thirty-five years been 1,551,686 tons. That increase was then considered very great; and, as we could not look into futurity, much stress was laid upon the argument that if protection were removed from British shipping, any increase would in future be monopolised by the ships of foreign nations. But the Legislature had other interests to consider besides that to which I belong. Protection was, therefore, swept away, and Shipowners were left to depend upon their own exertions, instead of depending upon the State. Their desponding was great, but so far from being “ruined,” they are richer now than ever they were at any former period, if I may judge of their wealth by the extraordinary increase of our shipping. On the 1st January, 1860 (ten years after all protection had been removed), we owned 5,710,968 tons. Thus, in ten years of Free-trade our increase was about as great as it had been in thirty-five years of protection; but the increase in the amount of business carried on in British ships is even more remarkable. Here are the facts:
In 1842, there were entered and cleared at our ports of British shipping 6,669,995 tons; 1850, 9,442,544 tons; 1861, 15,420,532 tons; the increase being 2,772,549 tons during nine years of protection, and 5,977,988 tons during eleven years of Free-trade.
In 1812 we built 129,929 tons of shipping; in 1849 only 117,953 tons. In 1850, we built 133,695 tons, and in 1861, 310,900 tons; showing an annual decrease between the former periods of 11,976 tons, but an annual increase between the latter of 177,205 tons.
The reason of these extraordinary results is obvious. Shipping is not the parent, it is the child of commerce. If your Government apply to its merchant shipping the principles we have adopted, you will find that the results will be very much the same, for these principles are applicable to all countries. Shipping has no creative power in itself, like land, or manufactures, or minerals; it depends, entirely, upon other interests for its existence. If a country produced what was necessary for its own wants and no more, it would not require any ships. If France had no commerce with other countries, and no trade along its own shores, there would be no employment for its shipping in its own trade. Now, though France has, I daresay, within herself the means of producing what other nations require to nearly as great an extent as the United Kingdom, and, though she requires as much or even more from other countries than we do, yet her sea-borne commerce is very limited as compared with her resources and her powers of consumption. Turning to the ‘Tableau Général du Commerce de la France,’ I find that, in 1860, the entrances and clearances with cargoes only in your foreign and colonial trades, and the entrances in your coasting trade, including the ships of France and of every nation trading with her, amounted to 9,773,865 tons, whereas, in the same year, it required 37,841,329 tons of shipping to transport the cargoes which entered and cleared from the ports of the United Kingdom. But, curiously enough, though the ships of all nations are allowed to enter our ports (and our consumers invite them to do so), there was, in 1860, in our foreign trade, only 4,294,444 tons of foreign shipping with cargoes as against 5,760,537 tons of British shipping; whereas, in your foreign trade, in the same year, there was 2,348,261 tons of foreign shipping with cargoes as against 1,663,615 tons of your own.
It is, thus, evident that any restriction you impose on the freedom of intercourse with other countries, while it curtails the operations of your merchants, likewise enhances the price of the raw material to your manufacturers; and while it increases the cost of the commodity to your people, curtails the employment of your Shipowners. But, even if those restrictions and differential duties (which you still maintain without any advantage to the revenue) benefited your Shipowners, which they do not, why should your merchants and manufacturers, and landowners and farmers, and, above all, your hardworking people, be made to suffer, so that your Shipowners might be enriched? So long as all the producing classes were protected, the Shipowners might have had some right to say that, as they were obliged to pay, for the benefit, real or imaginary of others, enhanced prices for all articles of consumption, they were consequently entitled to some compensating protection; but, since the recent relaxations of the French tariff, and, now that the producing classes are exposed to the competition of other countries, these classes have unquestionably a right to insist on free navigation.
No doubt your Shipowners will consider, as ours did, that their class was entitled to claim peculiar privileges, because the merchant service is the legitimate nursery of the seamen for the navy necessary for the protection of the State; but we have 20,000 more seamen now in our merchant service than we had in 1849. Free intercourse with other countries gave increased employment to our shipping, and therefore we required more seamen. So it will be with your country when you adopt a similar policy.
But, however fallacious the arguments have proved which were used against the repeal of our Navigation Laws, it is hardly possible to conceive anything so pernicious and absurd as the law itself which you still maintain. By way of illustration, may I direct your attention to the line of steamers trading between Southampton and the various ports in India, viâ the Mediterranean? These vessels pass Marseilles every week laden with articles of which your people may be greatly in want, but the differential duties which the laws of France levy are so high on these articles (because they happen to be in English ships) that they cannot be landed, consequently they are carried through the Straits of Gibraltar, and across the Bay of Biscay to Southampton, and from thence by rail to London, and there shipped in either English or French bottoms to some port in France. Could anything be more absurd? The price your people pay for this folly is well illustrated by the startling fact that in 1860 France imported from the United Kingdom 8,000,000 lbs. of silk, 4,000,000 lbs. of coffee, 16,000,000 lbs. of wool, and 116,000 cwt. of cotton, not an ounce of any of these articles having been produced in this country.
For the protection and “benefit” of your Shipowners, which is purely imaginary, as I will show, your people were compelled to pay greatly enhanced prices upon an enormous quantity of articles necessary for their existence.
A few facts will now suffice to prove that your Shipowners have not profited by protection any more than our Shipowners when they were under the guardian care of the State.
Your coasting trade is confined strictly to French vessels. The vessels of all other nations are actually prohibited from entering it. In that trade there were entered and cleared in 1850, 2,447,556 tons of shipping. In 1860, 2,917,823 tons were entered and cleared. In your trade with the United Kingdom your Shipowners have had to contend on equal terms with the owners of British shipping, yet what are the results? In 1850 there were entered and cleared in that trade 594,640 tons of French shipping, cargoes, and ballast, but in 1860 the entrances and clearances of your own shipping in the same trade had increased to 1,017,617 tons. Thus, while the vessels in your closely protected trade increased 20 per cent., those engaged in the unprotected trade were nearly doubled!