THE DISTRESSED SHIPOWNERS.
HARRIET MARTINEAU' ought to add another to the many services which she has rendered to her country, by just now producing a couple of stories for the instruction of Mr. George Frederick Young and other young gentlemen connected with the shipping in- terest whose education has been neglected. No writer has more impressively dramatized the truths of political economy, but the two stories are specially needed now.
One is the story of the British Farmer. Some years ago, the hero used annually to approach the Legislature with a piteous tale of " agricultural distress." In spite of Protection, which made bread dear for the benefit of the farmer, he was always on the high road to ruin. Either corn was so disastrously abundant at home, that the price was wretchedly low, and the farmer felt himself victimized by the pauper ; or, if prices were better, there was so little corn to sell that his aggregate returns were paltry, and he saw his countrymen hungering almost in vain. When it was proposed to abolish Protection, he cried out with horror, that the repeal of the Corn laws would be " the last feather,"—that British Agriculture would go into the Gazette,—that we should be made dependent on foreign supplies, &c. The Corn laws were repealed, and what has happened ? Prices have been steady ; domestic supplies have been as steady ; the consumption of food has enlarged ; the quality is continually improving ; the British
Farmer has become an enterprising student of chemistry and prac- tical mechanics, and he avows that he is prospering.. When he was compelled to put his shoulder to the wheel, although he had said that he was in too weakly a state, he made the effort with a will, he allowed difficulty to brighten his ideas, and we see the splendid and daily developing results.
The other story is that of the British Shipowner, who is now before us, as the farmer used to be, complaining of distress, and whining in the old way about competition with the foreigner, and our dependence upon that treacherous alien. But in the later chapters the two stories have shown a striking difference. Like the British farmer, the shipowner has had free trade forced upon him. As the farmer used to say thit he should never more cry, " Speed the plough ! " if the Corn laws were repealed, so the shipowner threatened never to cry, " Speed the prow !" if the Navigation laws were repealed,—and the shipowner is keeping his word. What is the cause of the difference ?
We will let the shipowner tell his own story first. The repeal of the Navigation laws is the sole or main cause of the present depression. During the seven years before 1849, the foreign tonnage in British ports was about three millions ; in the seven subsequent years it was close upon seven millions ; and while the shipowner is thus beaten down by foreign competition, he is cut out by the screw colliers of his own country, which can make fifty voyages while the ship makes only twelve. We admit to our ports the foreigner who excludes us from his. British mer- chants, says Mr. Beazley, of Liverpool, are invited to send out orders for American cotton ; but the American shipping laws pre- vent the employment of British shipping. We imported ftom France, a Protectionist country, fourteen millions of their manu- factures last year : they took from us goods worth four millions, chiefly unmanufactured. Spain is wide-awake, and permits Eng- lish ships to carry the heavy rough cargoes to Cuba, while the fine well-paying cargoes go in Spanish ships. And again—coffee which pays duty to the French customs of forty-eight shillings in French ships, pays eighty-four shillings in English ships. Ex- cluded by thejoreigner abroad, we let him cut us out at home, and Mr. Deniston, the Sunderland shipowner, tells a story of Bristol, when a friend of his saw nothing but foreign ships in the Docks, the British being almost entirely out of use. According to the shipowner this is the story of his depression, and he hints that if the House of Commons were not too depraved by false opinions and corrupt interests, he should at once ask for a res- toration of reciprocity.
But there is another and much more complete version of the same story. If foreign shipping has increased in our ports, so has British shipping : in the thirty-six years ending 1837, there was an increase in British shipping to the amount of 510,000 tons, the total then standing at 2,296,000. We all re- member Sir Robert Peel's free-trade measures in 1842 and 1844 : in the twelve years ending 1849, the increase was 1,131,000, twice the amount of the increase in the thirty-six years, free trade notwithstanding. Of course the success of the shipowner must have been sufficient to draw capital into his trade. With the closing day of 1849, disappeared the last traces of the Navigation laws ; but in the eight years ending 1857, the increase of British shipping was 1,064,000,—more than twice as great as that of the thirty-six years. The- comparative increase will perhaps be more distinctly displayed by the following table—
Period. Annual Increase.
High Protectionist tons 14,166
General Free-trade measures. 27 94,25Q Navigation laws repealed If 120,500
Thus British shipping has positively and largely increased, and in a highly progressive ratio. The advent of foreign shipping is not simply due to a direct trade, but to the fact that vessels in transitu find the whole of the United Kingdom at once the grandest and freest of intermediate ports. A vessel, for instance, from Havana to Hamburg, will now touch at an Eng- lish port on its way. During the height of the scarcity of corn, although other countries were throwing open their ports, yet as they did so under temporary edicts to meet the pressure revocable at pleasure, England was the grand central market which was always full, and every class of the population had ample supplies of bread at perfectly reasonable rates. The vast increase to foreign shipping may have yielded profit to the foreigner, but it brought an immense absolute increase to our resources, extended our commerce, enlarged the means of the trading classes, and has greatly contributed to the immense labour fund which has kept our millions of the working classes in work at good wages. Why, then, was the British shipowner, who himself had an increasing trade, alone in his distress ? The explanation is simple. Gold was discovered in Australia in 1851: there was an immense outburst of treasure ; working gold-diggers were buying London porter at a guinea a bottle, and there was a tremendous rush of emigration, exports, and shipping. Three years later, there was the Russian war, with wondrous prospects for shipowners of vast freights for store ships, &o. And there have been many speculative enterprises, from the Panamk line of Australian mails to the Great Eastern. Ship-owning speculation it is which has de- pressed ship-owning property. To revert to our parallel,—while the farmer laboured, the shipowner speculated. And while the farmer bestirred himself to extend his field of operations, to im- prove his art and to render his agricultural machinery more per- fect, the shipowner has been invoking the ghost of Reciprocity, aid is now launching his bitterest execrations, not against the foreign owner of the sailing ship, but against the British steam collier, which cuts him out in his own market because it does his own work more handily and faster. And he is crying for the contraction of our commerce—trying to elect Members of Parlia- ment on purpose to perform that work, when a little energy, a little intelligent use of influence, would expedite the thing of all others he most wants—an extension of the fields of British com- merce. Let him aid Michel Chevalier to promote free trade in France,—Italy and Hungary to secure free trade for themselves, —Alexander II. to do the same for Russia,—and Sir Charles Wood to open up the new fields of production and exchange which await us in India.
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