they are richer now than ever they were at any former period, if I may judge of their wealth by the extraordinary increase of our shipping. On the 1st January, 1860 (ten years after all protection had been removed), we owned 5,710,968 tons. Thus, in ten years of Free-trade our increase was about as great as it had been in thirty-five years of protection; but the increase in the amount of business carried on in British ships is even more remarkable. Here are the facts:
In 1842, there were entered and cleared at our ports of British shipping 6,669,995 tons; 1850, 9,442,544 tons; 1861, 15,420,532 tons; the increase being 2,772,549 tons during nine years of protection, and 5,977,988 tons during eleven years of Free-trade.
In 1812 we built 129,929 tons of shipping; in 1849 only 117,953 tons. In 1850, we built 133,695 tons, and in 1861, 310,900 tons; showing an annual decrease between the former periods of 11,976 tons, but an annual increase between the latter of 177,205 tons.
The reason of these extraordinary results is obvious. Shipping is not the parent, it is the child of commerce. If your Government apply to its merchant shipping the principles we have adopted, you will find that the results will be very much the same, for these principles are applicable to all countries. Shipping has no creative power in itself, like land, or manufactures, or minerals; it depends, entirely, upon other interests for its existence. If a country produced what was necessary for its own wants and no more, it would not require any ships. If France had no commerce with other countries, and no trade along its own shores, there would be no employment for its shipping in its own trade. Now, though France has, I daresay, within herself the means of producing what other nations require to nearly as great an extent as the United Kingdom, and, though she requires as much or even more from other countries than we do, yet her sea-borne commerce is very limited as compared with her resources and her powers of consumption. Turning to the 'Tableau Général du Commerce de la France,' I find that, in 1860, the entrances and clearances with cargoes only in your foreign and colonial trades, and the entrances in your coasting trade, including the ships of France and of every nation trading with her, amounted to 9,773,865 tons, whereas, in the same year, it required 37,841,329 tons of shipping to transport the cargoes which entered and cleared from the ports of the United Kingdom. But, curiously enough, though the ships of all nations
