countries, for the exclusive benefit of your Shipowners, who do not increase the number of their vessels. 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?
France, as you are aware, has recently made great changes in her commercial tariff, and ere long she will, I daresay, make as great changes in her Navigation Laws. I can offer no opinion to your Chamber of Commerce beyond advising its members in the interests of their country to urge the Legislature by petitions and by every constitutional means within their power to remove every restriction in your Customs' regulations not absolutely necessary for the protection of the revenue, to reduce the duties upon all articles of large consumption, to abolish all differential duties which yield little or no revenue, and to repeal your Navigation Laws, which do the people great injury, and do not benefit your Shipowners except in rare instances.
I am thoroughly convinced that by some such changes as these much of your ancient greatness and grandeur would be restored. Unwise laws, combined with other matters too delicate for me to name, have done perhaps more to retard your progress than the loss of your possessions in the East, or your severance from the Brazils. Indeed, had Portugal adopted Free-trade measures at the time of that severance she would have retained the bulk of the Brazilian commerce; but your Protection laws set up barriers at all your ports, through which very few ships but your own could enter—they drove trade from your cities, and the very bread from the mouths of your children. No wonder that the glory of Portugal passed away; and that your merchants, who were, indeed, princes in the days of Vasco de Gama, are now almost unknown in the markets of Europe.
Even, in spite of your restrictive laws, the natural facilities of the Tagus are still so great and so many that vessels from the Brazils are beginning to make it their port of call, and if the changes I have ventured to name are carried into effect, I am certain that Lisbon, from its position, is destined to carry on a
