ships were still sold in England, but this was rather because their owners had no profitable use for them at home than from any lack of British iron vessels. Since that period, the decline of American shipping, for reasons that should be well understood, has been constant.
I refer to the Navigation Laws and Protective Tariff of the United States. The former, first enacted in 1792 and revised and added to since that time only in unimportant details, have long outlived the usefulness they may once have possessed), and completely fail to meet the requirements of the changes in ocean navigation that have taken place during the period of more than a century that has since elapsed. As is well known, they prohibit an American citizen from owning a foreign-built merchant ship. Meanwhile the Protective Tariff so increases the cost of living and with it the cost of the labor and materials that go into the construction of a modern ship, that the American ship-builder cannot produce a steel or iron vessel at anything like a cost that will enable her to compete successfully with a ship of the same class constructed in a European shipyard. Were it not for this hindrance, the immense natural advantages of such broad, deep waters as those of the Delaware and Chesapeake, where the finest coal and iron ore are within easy transportation, and the abundant food supplies of the neighboring garden States and of the West which are easily accessible, would make them ideal spots for the construction of ships. So it will be seen that the Navigation Laws and Protective Tariff are the mill-
