Chapter XLI: Appendix: No. 5

(Translation.)

Inclosure 1 in No. 73.

M. Fleury to Mr. Lindsay, M.P.

Londres, 17th June, 1862.

SIR,

The ‘Moniteur’ of the 2nd of May last published a report submitted to the Emperor by the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works, relative to the state of the French mercantile marine and the law by which it is governed.

In conformity with the suggestion of this report, which has been approved by his Majesty, the _Conseil Supérieur_ of Commerce is instructed to prosecute an inquiry for the purpose of furnishing the Imperial Government with the data which it needs in order to enable it to judge between the diversity of opinion which has arisen on this grave question.

In the inquiry, as in that which has been presented on the reform of our Customs legislation, it will be advantageous that the principal maritime places in Foreign States should be represented, and the statements of their representatives heard side by side with those of French merchants and Shipowners. This is why the Minister of Foreign Affairs invites me to inform those principally interested here that the _Conseil Supérieur_ will begin its sittings about the 10th of next month.

M. Thouvenel adds that in case, as he hopes, the merchants of London, appreciating the importance of the questions to be raised in this inquiry, will express their intention to respond to the invitation of the French Ministry, I should communicate their names to him, so that he may invite them to present themselves at the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works, Department of Foreign Commerce, Rue de Tarennes 78b. M. Rouher will take the necessary measures that they may be summoned before the Upper Council with all due promptitude.

I think, Sir, I cannot do better than communicate this invitation to you, requesting you to inform me whether it will be agreeable to you to accede to it yourself. I shall, moreover, be much obliged by your communicating with the merchants or Shipowners in the City, and forwarding to me the names of such as may wish to take advantage of it. I shall take care to let you know later the precise date when the sittings of the Council will open.

Believe me and the _Conseil Général_,

FLEURY.

(Copy.)

Inclosure 2 in No. 73.

Mr. Lindsay, M.P., to M. Fleury.

8, Austin Friars, London, 23rd June, 1862.

SIR,

I have read with no ordinary interest the letter you did me the
honour to address me on the 17th instant, and I shall be happy
to forward the object your Government has in view by every means
in my power. So far as I am concerned, you have merely to name
the time when my presence is again required in Paris. In regard
to other witnesses, the publication of your letter to me would
enable you to obtain a greater amount and variety of evidence than
could possibly be obtained through my own unaided exertions. I am
glad your Government has decided upon an open inquiry, for thus
all the important facts bearing upon the subject can be brought
to light. The knowledge of these facts will greatly facilitate
the inquiry about to be instituted. For instance, I dare say
your Shipowners think (as our Shipowners thought in 1849) that
any material relaxation of the Navigation Laws of France would
ruin them. The arguments used against the repeal of our laws in
1849 were very plausible, but not very profound; for what are the
facts? The repeal of our Navigation Laws came into operation on
the 1st January, 1850; the aggregate tonnage of the merchant navy
of the British empire at that time was 4,232,962 tons. It had
risen from 2,681,276 tons in 1815. So that the increase, under
the guardian care of the State, had in the previous thirty-five
years been 1,551,686 tons. That increase was then considered
very great; and, as we could not look into futurity, much stress
was laid upon the argument that if protection were removed from
British shipping, any increase would in future be monopolised
by the ships of foreign nations. But the Legislature had other
interests to consider besides that to which I belong. Protection
was, therefore, swept away, and Shipowners were left to depend
upon their own exertions, instead of depending upon the State.
Their desponding was great, but so far from being “ruined,” 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
are allowed to enter our ports (and our consumers invite them to
do so), there was, in 1860, in our foreign trade, only 4,294,444
tons of foreign shipping with cargoes as against 5,760,537 tons
of British shipping; whereas, in your foreign trade, in the same
year, there was 2,348,261 tons of foreign shipping with cargoes as
against 1,663,615 tons of your own.

It is, thus, evident that any restriction you impose on the
freedom of intercourse with other countries, while it curtails the
operations of your merchants, likewise enhances the price of the
raw material to your manufacturers; and while it increases the
cost of the commodity to your people, curtails the employment of
your Shipowners. But, even if those restrictions and differential
duties (which you still maintain without any advantage to the
revenue) benefited your Shipowners, which they do not, why should
your merchants and manufacturers, and landowners and farmers, and,
above all, your hardworking people, be made to suffer, so that
your Shipowners might be enriched? So long as all the producing
classes were protected, the Shipowners might have had some right
to say that, as they were obliged to pay, for the benefit, real
or imaginary of others, enhanced prices for all articles of
consumption, they were consequently entitled to some compensating
protection; but, since the recent relaxations of the French
tariff, and, now that the producing classes are exposed to the
competition of other countries, these classes have unquestionably
a right to insist on free navigation.

No doubt your Shipowners will consider, as ours did, that their
class was entitled to claim peculiar privileges, because the
merchant service is the legitimate nursery of the seamen for the
navy necessary for the protection of the State; but we have 20,000
more seamen now in our merchant service than we had in 1849. Free
intercourse with other countries gave increased employment to our
shipping, and therefore we required more seamen. So it will be
with your country when you adopt a similar policy.

But, however fallacious the arguments have proved which were used
against the repeal of our Navigation Laws, it is hardly possible
to conceive anything so pernicious and absurd as the law itself
which you still maintain. By way of illustration, may I direct
your attention to the line of steamers trading between Southampton
and the various ports in India, _viâ_ the Mediterranean?
These vessels pass Marseilles every week laden with articles of
which your people may be greatly in want, but the differential
duties which the laws of France levy are so high on these articles
(because they happen to be in English ships) that they cannot
be landed, consequently they are carried through the Straits of
Gibraltar, and across the Bay of Biscay to Southampton, and from
thence by rail to London, and there shipped in either English
or French bottoms to some port in France. Could anything be
more absurd? The price your people pay for this folly is well
illustrated by the startling fact that in 1860 France imported
from the United Kingdom 8,000,000 lbs. of silk, 4,000,000 lbs. of
coffee, 16,000,000 lbs. of wool, and 116,000 cwt. of cotton, not
an ounce of any of these articles having been produced in this
country.

For the protection and “benefit” of your Shipowners, which is
purely imaginary, as I will show, your people were compelled to
pay greatly enhanced prices upon an enormous quantity of articles
necessary for their existence.

A few facts will now suffice to prove that your Shipowners have
not profited by protection any more than our Shipowners when they
were under the guardian care of the State.

Your coasting trade is confined strictly to French vessels.
The vessels of all other nations are actually prohibited from
entering it. In that trade there were entered and cleared in 1850,
2,447,556 tons of shipping. In 1860, 2,917,823 tons were entered
and cleared. In your trade with the United Kingdom your Shipowners
have had to contend on equal terms with the owners of British
shipping, yet what are the results? In 1850 there were entered and
cleared in that trade 594,640 tons of French shipping, cargoes,
and ballast, but in 1860 the entrances and clearances of your own
shipping in the same trade had increased to 1,017,617 tons. Thus,
while the vessels in your closely protected trade increased 20 per
cent., those engaged in the unprotected trade were nearly doubled!

I fear I weary you with figures, but allow me to give one more
instance of the pernicious effects of a protective policy on both
English and French shipping, as shown by a return of the tonnage
of ships built for or otherwise added to the merchant navies of
the United Kingdom and France in the following years. (_See_
Table, p. 595.)

These figures speak for themselves. The comparative annual
progress of the shipping of both countries was not worthy of
notice during the first period, when both were protected by the
laws of the respective countries. You made a start when between
1849 and 1850 our Navigation Laws were repealed, but when the
impetus which that repeal gave to our commerce came into play, and
when our Shipowners felt that they had to depend upon themselves,
and not upon the State, we shot ahead at an amazing rate during
the second period, while the annual increase of your shipping
remained stationary.

+----------------------++---------------------+
|To the United Kingdom.|| To France. |
+----------+-----------++----------+----------+
| | Tons. || | Tons. |
| In 1842 | 129,929 || In 1842 | 30,923 |
| ” 1849 | 117,953 || ” 1849 | 32,223 |
| ” 1850 | 133,695 || ” 1850 | 43,474 |
| ” 1860 | 211,968 || ” 1860 | 43,192 |
+----------+-----------++----------+----------+

When in Paris last month, I had occasion to converse with many of
your merchants and others in regard to the effect produced by the
recent commercial treaty. They were satisfied, but they felt that
something more was wanted, though they could not exactly say what
it was. Now, though both countries have every reason to be much
satisfied with that treaty, the want is to me very apparent. Free
navigation must accompany freedom of commerce. The ramifications
of commerce are so numerous and the competition so close that
the slightest hindrance to its natural flow, or the smallest
increase of freight, either retards, paralyses, or destroys vast
branches of it. The trade which your people are now carrying on
with England and its colonies and possessions is greatly retarded
by the restrictions of the Navigation Laws. The produce of France
which we buy is not in all cases paid for by the produce or
manufactures of this country. We wish you to take in exchange
for your wines and for the other productions of France which we
require, and you desire in many cases to receive in payment for
those productions, the produce of our colonies and possessions;
but your Navigation Laws raise, as I have shown, the price of
all such importations, so as to affect, most unfavourably for
your people, the conditions of exchange, and, consequently, our
commercial intercourse with each other is much more limited than
it would be under a system of free navigation. I most sincerely
trust that these restrictions may soon be removed; I do so, not
merely on account of my countrymen, but for the benefit of your
people, who will be large gainers by the change.

We were the first nation, I regret to say, to raise barriers to
free intercourse with other nations. It was Great Britain which
first set up laws to dictate the course which the ships of other
nations should follow upon the ocean meant to be free for the use
of mankind.

We maintained that wretched policy for centuries to the injury of
others, but not to our own gain.

At last we discovered that the poverty of our neighbours did not
enrich ourselves. Twelve years ago we changed our policy, and I
have given you an outline of the happy results. Your country is
still pursuing the same mistaken policy, but I think the day is
not far distant when your enlightened Monarch will sweep away all
the ancient barriers which hamper his commerce, and thus give to
his people that freedom of intercourse which, while it tends to
promote peace and goodwill, cannot fail to develop to an extent
hitherto unknown the vast natural resources of your country.

I am, &c.,

(Signed) W. S. LINDSAY.