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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

885

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE; LONDON

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able employment of shipping depends upon the amount of trade which is open to it. If one- sixth of our shipping is employed in carrying on trades, out of which foreign legislation has the power of driving it, then foreign legislation can injure us to that extent. Others might or might not be gainers, but we should certainly be losers. I have had a table prepared of the amount of British shipping which entered and cleared at some of the principal European ports in 1846, distinguishing the direct from the carrying trade. The general result is as follows:-

Entered.

From British ports

Shipa.

5,290

Tons. 956,870

From Foreign ports

1.268

233,521

--

Cleared.

For British ports For Foreign ports

..

Ships. 5,120

1,363

Tous. 953,467 220,968

From this it will be evident that should these countries turn our system against ourselves, that

is, forbid us to engage in the indirect or carrying trade, they could throw more than 200,000 tons of British shipping out of employment. In this return I have not included the French ports, be- cause France does already turn our system against ourselves, and exclude us from the indirect trade. The return from the French ports is remarkable. It shows that the entries of British ships in the same year, 1846, were:—

From British ports

From Foreign ports

Ships. 1.430 2

Tons.

191,497

269

These two ships entered in ballast. They would not have been admissible with cargoes.

Moreover, the danger of such retaliation is not imaginary. It is a policy which has more than once been resorted to by foreigners. Not to go

back to the old case of Queen Elizabeth, we may quote the breaking down of one part of our law by

the retaliation of the Americans, and of another

by the threats of the Prussians. The Reciprocity system which was adopted on the latter occasion is now insufficient. The treaties made to avert reta- liation then are now terminable, and one of them has actually been terminated. France, Prussia,

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Sweden, Denmark, the Hanse Towns, Holland, Austria, can, by giving a twelvemonths' notice, free themselves to act towards us as they like. Let us see how they stand disposed.

France cannot well make her law more strin- gent than it is, though she might impose dif. ferential duties, were it not for the Treaty.

Prussiat avowedly contemplates differential duties, and has given notice of the termination of the Treaty which has subsisted between us and the Zollverein, with the professed intention of organising a Navigation League against us.

Sweden has just introduced into her tariff a plan of differential duties for the protection of national vessels, which she is for the present pre- vented from adopting only by the Treaty, now terminable.

Denmark has no design, so far as I am aware, of altering her present liberal policy; but she cannot fail to perceive the disadvantage at which she i placed by the concessions we have made

to the States of Northern Germany, but have not extended to her. She will feel her disad- vantage more should she lose the Duchies, and already she has felt it in consequence of the pro- hibition against Holstein vessels lading in Danish ports; and merchants interested in the trade of Denmark have asked for relief.

The Hanse Towns, or Hamburgh at least, are

still firm, I believe, on the liberal side; but they have been strongly solicited to join the proposed German League; and we have recently had seve- ral complaints from them as to the operation of our law, particularly as it affects their trade with Western Africa, and more generally, inasmuch as it is less liberal to them than theirs to us. But the growing tendency to a German League is

• Both Sweden and Denmark are bound to us by ancient treaties, which they cannot terminate without our consent: hut these only require them to treat us on the footing of the most favoured foreign nation, and would not prevent their lay-

ing restriction on foreign. in favour of national, vessels.

Baron Arnim, the author of the Prussian scheme for Navigation League, is now, I believe, Minister for Foreign Affers at B..lin.