W. S. Lindsay

“ Indeed, they were almost as famous, at the time, in that country as the so-called celebrated Acts of Cromwell were in Great Britain—notorious, rather than famous, not for any benefits they conferred on the people of either country, but because the object of each was to cripple the maritime and naval resources of the rival power without enhancing its own; for, in those days, the happiness and prosperity of one nation was supposed to be best promoted by increasing its power of summarily inflicting punishment for any wrongs attributed to its neighbour. ”

“ I have seen a captain whose heart was in his ship, caress her!—yes, caress her, by clapping the taffrail where he stood when she was performing her work to his satisfaction, as if she had been a living thing, and heard him exclaiming, “Go a-head, my beauty!” just as many persons may have been heard extolling the performance of a favourite horse. Care must, therefore, be taken not to interfere by unnecessary legislative enactments with what is not merely our business but our pride and pleasure, or we may be driven, to the serious loss of the nation, to seek other investments for our capital. ”

“ For more than two centuries we attempted to regulate our maritime commerce by means of the Navigation Laws and their innumerable additions and amendments, the fallacy of which I have endeavoured in these volumes to expose; yet we are now following the same course our forefathers adopted by attempting, by means of a library of Mercantile Marine Laws, to regulate the details of the business of our Shipowners. Commerce, in all its branches, flourishes most when left alone. Leave our Shipowners alone, except when they do wrong. ”

“ Even France is a striking example of the loss a nation sustains by endeavouring by means of Protection to shut herself up within herself.
It is thus evident that every restriction a country imposes upon its freedom of intercourse with other countries—while it curtails the operations of its merchants, and enhances the price of the raw material to its manufacturers, increasing also the cost of the commodity to the people—must necessarily curtail the employment of its Shipowners. ”

“ Should there not be some more stringent provisions with respect to the inspection of sailing vessels? It is an old proverb, ‘Who ever saw a dead donkey?’ But who ever saw an old sailing-ship broken up? I am inclined to think that it is more to the interest of small owners to let an old tub go on shore than to bring her safe into port. This works two evils:—1, the danger to human life; 2, the greater rate of insurance on honest owners to make up an average for the dishonest. Should there not be a Board of Trade inspection as to seaworthiness: 1, of every ship once a year ”

“ It is, indeed, sad to look, as I now do, from the window of my hotel upon the beautiful but lifeless Tagus—to think what it is by nature, what it was in commerce, and what it might be under wise and liberal laws. The future is in the hands of your own people, and the members of your chamber might become instruments of great good by the dissemination of statistical and other information bearing upon the questions on which you have invited my opinion. You have happily a free press, which will enable your chamber to do so to great advantage. ”

“ But these restrictive laws retard the natural progress of commerce in ways too numerous to mention within the limits of a letter, and they are as absurd as they are pernicious. Their absurdity becomes apparent when you ask yourself the question, why should the merchants of either France or Portugal not be allowed, when it suits their purpose, to import direct, in any ships they please, the produce of Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, instead of importing it through England or through any other country where it is not grown? ”

“ To those maritime questions I have long devoted my attention, and I have often been struck at the circuitous course which ships, by the laws which nations adopted, have been obliged to follow. The ocean was meant to be free to mankind, but one nation by its laws dictates the course which the ships of other nations must follow; another nation, by way of retaliation, lays down the only course which it will allow its competitors to adopt. Thus we see ships, for instance, allowed to follow one track with cargo, but compelled to return by the same track, in ballast. ”

“ A house servant without a character has not much chance of employment, even now, when the demand is very great for them. To give a true and just character is a duty we owe, not merely to ourselves, but to society, and shipmasters should understand that, by granting a certificate of “V. G.” or “G.,” when the character of the seaman does not deserve either grade, may produce far more serious consequences on board ship than would likely be the case in our households, where we can discharge a bad servant at once, which we have no power to do at sea. ”

“ From 1860 the Shipowners of Great Britain, though they have experienced in their trade, like all other branches of trade, periods of depression, and rarely more so than at the present moment, have never looked backwards. All special and peculiar burdens having now been removed, their only present desire is, and it is not an unreasonable one, that they should be interfered with as little as possible—certainly not more so than is necessary for the protection of the public—in the management of their own affairs, and that they should have a fair and free field: they seek no favours. ”

“ The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. The Act of Navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases by absolute prohibition, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries.” Adam Smith, at great length, expounds the principle of the Navigation Laws, admitting at the same time that they are not favourable to the growth of the opulence arising from foreign commerce. ”

“ It may thus be hoped that France will not again be found in the crooked road of retrogression, but that, having under innumerable difficulties and after long years of political discussion, often in the midst of civil wars and great changes in her constitution, achieved victory over the antiquated dogmas of a cumbrous and ruinous system of protection, she will continue in the clear path of progress, which so well becomes a nation endowed by nature with the richest soil and finest climate in Europe. ”

“ My Lords, I will readily give a large licence for exaggeration to that lively class of persons who contribute to our amusement by their powers of imagination, drawing upon their fancy for their facts, and on their memory for their jests. To these men I render all grateful homage, as among the gayest of our sad species; so far as fourfold, [Pg 271] or even tenfold, I am willing to extend my licence. But what shall we say of a hundredfold, nay, a hundred-and-fiftyfold, and that, not by the lively wit, but by the plodding dealer in returns, tables, and trade and shipping statistics. ”

“ Indeed, we have not seriously attempted any great practical scheme for their education or for the amalgamation of the services of the Royal Navy and those of the mercantile marine, which, while invaluable to us as a nation, would tend so much to elevate the social position of that neglected portion of their class, who, not having the good fortune to be enrolled in the Navy or on the lists of the large Shipowners, must seek their daily bread at sea in any ship where employment can be found. ”

“ If we acted on the principle of reciprocity, we ought to give perfect freedom of trade to those who gave perfect freedom of trade to us. If the United States admitted our goods duty free, we could not do less than admit the corn of the United States free. ”

“ The real objection to Government survey is this: no Government can insist on more than average standard of efficiency; but most of those ships of which the nation is proud are built to a much higher standard. Now, suppose two ships competing for freight, one of the high class I describe, and one of low type just sufficient to pass survey. Both have got certificates; these have blunted the discrimination of underwriters, so that premiums are alike on both, and, naturally enough, shippers send their goods by the one that asks least freight. ”

“ If money had been my sole object in life I should have been a more successful man by sticking to my calicoes, for my partners have grown richer than I by doing so, and young men taken into the concern since I left have made fortunes. I may add that the original formation of the partnership, and the whole scheme of the business, sprung exclusively from myself. But what has this to do with your bill? I never detect myself falling into a twaddle about things personal and past without suspecting that I am growing old and garrulous. ”

“ Herries had been Chancellor of the Exchequer so long before as 1828. He was an able and honest Conservative; sound in his principles and earnest in everything he undertook. To him, therefore, the Protectionist shipowners in their hour of trial appealed for aid; nor did they appeal in vain. Mr. Herries was heart and soul with them. He saw nothing but ruin and desolation in the abolition of these ancient laws. They had, in his judgment, been tampered with and weakened by Huskisson, and now they were about to be destroyed by such men as Cobden, Bright, Ricardo, and Milner Gibson, backed, alas! ”

“ Bancroft’s offer appearing to him a forcible argument for including the coasting trade in any future arrangement. In conclusion, he expressed the hope that when England and America had concurred in setting an example to the world of free navigation, other nations would be induced to imitate it by a moral force it would be difficult to resist; and that we should live to see the ocean, that great highway of nations, as free as the ships that traverse its bosom, or the winds that blow over it. ”

“ The shipping of the world has just passed through an ordeal of great depression. The losses which Shipowners of all countries have sustained during the last four years have been so great, that capital has, to a considerable extent, ceased to flow in that direction, so much so that, by returns now before me, I find that the tonnage built during the year 1860 in the United States, in Canada, in New Brunswick, in Norway, in England, and in other great producing countries, falls far short of what it was either in 1859, or in any one of the previous years of depression. ”

“ But this system of Government supervision would not end here. An inspection of every chain and anchor manufactory falls far short of the demands of thousands of well-meaning people, who wish to see some potent Board of Trade testing-machines permanently established in every dockyard in the kingdom, as if our shipbuilders knew nothing whatever about the business, or had all arrived at the conclusion that honesty was no longer the best policy, and that the only sure road to riches was to cheat their customers. ”

“ Indeed, when it is considered that the safety of a merchant ship, as well as of the lives of the passengers and crew, are entrusted to the skill and judgment of the master, it is essential that his authority should be upheld, as any interference tending to impair his authority and to lower his position adds seriously to the dangers of navigation. ”

“ Nevertheless, Government felt its views to be sound, and that the change contemplated would benefit shipowners as well as the nation, but, in the absence of facts, experience alone could support the opinions thus formed and used as arguments in favour of the Government policy. The inferiority, in many respects, of the masters of our merchant ships, compared with those of other nations, which competition, they said, would improve, as well as the vessels under their charge, was one of their strongest points. ”

“ Though belligerent rights, the coasting trade, and the admission of British-built ships to American registration are difficult questions for me to deal with, involving as they do the policy of the respective nations bearing upon other interests than those of commerce, I may remark that it is easy of proof in regard to the two latter that the policy of the United States, while it is unjust towards England, is injurious to the people of America, and contrary to the principles laid down by their own most eminent statesmen in their intercourse with other countries. ”

“ We must, also, remember that every act fettering free navigation, renders our Shipowners less able to compete with those of other countries, and, if it does not forward the main object in view—the safety of life—must be a clear national loss, because it renders us less able to make our ships a source of profit, a result which, if not carefully watched, might easily be carried to such an extent as to discourage investments in British shipping. ”

“ Finding themselves in a safe geographical position, with the most magnificent harbours on every part of their coast, already prepared by the hand of nature for their use, with the greatest navigable rivers in the world, with lakes which are inland seas, and with boundless virgin soil at their disposal: wanting nothing, in short, but wise laws and abundant labour, they speedily discovered their strength, and, in their earlier debates, in Congress gravely discussed the question whether they should not style themselves the most enlightened people in the world. ”

“ Is it in human nature that the conscience of the good Shipowner will remain tender? He sees a vessel of much less strength, and not nigh so efficiently manned, go to sea, perhaps a foot deeper than his, earning the same rate of freight, and carrying a Government certificate of competency. ”

“ In directing the attention of the masses to this all-important question he sought the aid of men who had sprung from the people and had been trained to commerce; and he found many able and truly earnest colleagues, but none more so than John Bright, a man of greater, though perhaps not more convincing eloquence than his own, who like himself had no object in view, as the whole experience of his life has proved, than the good of his country. ”