History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 3 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Their extreme views not conclusive to the Committee.

It cannot, however, be said that, in 1847, the repeal party had succeeded in convincing the majority of even the Committee of the soundness of their opinions. The shipowners, as a body, endeavoured to controvert, and with considerable show of success for the time, the theories propounded by the Free-trade party, so strenuously supported by the officers of the Board of Trade. The cold imperturbable evidence of Mr. (now Sir) John Shaw Lefevre, who was intimately connected with the Free-trade party, contrasted strikingly with the impetuosity of such men as Mr. Macgregor, and even with the testimony of Mr. Porter.

Evidence adduced by the shipowners.

The shipowners, on the other hand, put forward their most practical and intelligent witnesses[62] to prove that the repeal of the Navigation Laws would cause an immediate depreciation of thirty per cent. in the value of their property, and of shipping, generally, throughout the United Kingdom; that, if the British shipowner were deprived of his privileges, already greatly curtailed by the system of reciprocity, it would be decidedly to his advantage to invest his capital in foreign ships, and to navigate them by foreign seamen: Englishmen, they alleged, would own, in conjunction with foreigners (if possible), foreign ships, in order to secure the privileges still attaching to foreign flags, since British ships would still be excluded from many foreign ports, even though the Navigation Laws were abrogated. It was shown, as they conceived incontestably, that a ship could be built at Dantzig at a much less cost than in England,[63] and that, if the foreign trade were thrown open without restriction, no one would think of building British ships; the result being, that a great number of persons dependent on shipping—shipwrights and others—must be thrown out of employment, with great general distress ensuing. The difficulty of manning the Royal Navy, under such untoward circumstances (a standard argument), was, of course, dwelt on with great force as an unmitigated national evil. It was further urged, that the relaxation of the laws, so far as to allow Asiatic and African produce to be admitted to Great Britain for home consumption from ports in Europe, in all bottoms, must deprive the British shipowner of his most valuable privilege, and destroy the very essence of the ancient law.

Ships built more cheaply abroad.

The argument, that these laws ought to be abrogated in the interests of the consumer was met by the counter-assertion, that any difference of freight, if such indeed existed, would make no appreciable difference in the price of consumable articles. Even the excessively high freight of 8s. per barrel from the United States, which had been paid on an emergency, would, they held, amount to only one halfpenny per pound on the flour, so that when freight was reduced to its usual rate, a very slight increase of value was the consequence. The witnesses against repeal spoke of various other articles[64] in a similar manner, arguing that the reduction would be so small that it could never reach the consumer.

Evidence of Mr. G. F. Young,

Of all the witnesses examined before the Committee, no one was more opposed to the repeal than Mr. George Frederick Young, a shipbuilder and shipowner in the port of London. He was quite as strong a partisan in favour of leaving things as they were as Mr. Ricardo and Mr. Porter were in favour of Free-trade. He would admit no further innovations of any kind, contending, that, even the reciprocity system had been in the highest degree detrimental to the interests of the British shipowners: indeed, he asserted that if the Navigation Laws were repealed, it would be seen that the interests of the merchants would be quite as much compromised as those of shipowners, as it was under the operation of these laws that importations were so largely directed into the emporium of England. He apprehended that this repeal would substitute certain conveniently-located foreign ports as depôts for imported produce for the supply of England, in lieu of British ports. He fortified this opinion by elaborate calculations, showing an enormous difference in the warehousing charges at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hamburg, leading, as he apprehended, to this inevitable conclusion, that a British merchant would find it more to his interest to establish depôts at those places, than to import commodities for the supply of his own country, to be lodged in the St. Katherine or West India Docks, or in other similar establishments.

With regard to the subject of the Whale Fisheries, and the way in which they might be affected by a repeal of the Navigation Laws, Mr. Young pointed out that the trade of the northern and southern fisheries had been for many years past a declining one: but this decline, he said, though in a great degree traceable to other causes, received an accelerated impetus from the course pursued by the Legislature in discouraging these trades, while the Americans, on the other hand, had received from their Legislature every possible support. So far as regards the relative cost of navigating British ships, Mr. Young brought forward a mass of figures[65] for the purpose of showing that the difference in every case was in favour of foreign shipowners, but more especially in the case of those of the United States, Holland, the Hanse Towns, Sweden, and Prussia.

and his general conclusions.