in 1869, three-fourths of them had been imported into France in foreign vessels. Consequently, he demanded, forgetting altogether the interests of the consumer and manufacturer, the re-establishment of the surtaxes de pavillon upon all importations, except those under the flag of such producing countries as were protected against surtaxes by the treaties of navigation with France, at the same time, expressing a hope that these changes would afford to the French Mercantile marine "an encouragement and a strength that its situation imperatively required."[1]
But it is difficult—indeed it is impossible, to understand how the abolition of the surtaxes de pavillon by the law of 1866 could have caused so much mischief in 1869 and previously, as it was only from the 11th of June of that year that the abolition came into operation; and as to the surtaxes d'entrepôt they had, in fact, never been set aside! It was on such grounds as these, that the chief provisions of the wise and liberal Merchant Shipping Act of Napoleon III. were swept away!
Happily, however, there are still many able and shrewd men in the Councils of France—men who were, from the first, well aware of the pernicious
- ↑ The fact, as I learn from my friend M. Michel Chevalier, connected with this Committee of Inquiry—the evidence before which was made the basis of Thiers' measure—was that Pouyer-quertier, though not a member of it, exercised so much influence with its chairman, M. Paulmier, a deputy of Calvados, that he, being constantly in attendance with witnesses of strong Protectionist views, prevailed on him to put such questions to them, as would make it appear that Free-trade was ruining France. Witnesses of Liberal views, as I have shown, could hardly be heard. Nevertheless, the Committee, as I have already observed, came to no conclusion, and no report was made beyond the informal one of M. Ancel.
