The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-31 00:00:00

The Foreign Carrying Trade cf America.

Americans are considered, and truly, a keen,
shrewd people. There are broad business questions
on which the English differ from them, such, for
instance, as Protection v. Free Trade. The English
may hold that Free Trade would be beneficial
to America because it has been beneficial to Eng-
land ; but there are sound, good arguments ad-
vanced by the Americans to show that the contrary
is the case, and these arguments may or may not
be more forcible than those advanced against
them. The subject of our article does not, how-
ever, come under the head of au argument against
Protection. In another part of our columns will be
found a letter from T. SILVER, Esq., addressed to
the Hon. W. WELLS, who has been appointed by the
government of the United States to collect facts at
New York, which will furnish the basis on which
Congress may hereafter revise the tariff. Mr. SIL-
VER brings to the notice of this official a curious
fact arising out of the great American contest.
Before the war America was in a position to com-
pete with any country in shipbuilding, and it was
never contemplated that circumstances would sud-
denly change this position. To American modellers
and shipwrights we owe the great advance in the
construction of sea-going vessels. The revolution in
the building trade worked by such clippers as the
Marco Polo is wholly due to American skill and science.
From the yards of that nation were launched the
crafts that amazed the world by their extraordinary
speed. More than half the ships that sailed from
Liverpool under the English flag had been built in
America. These were the circumstances in opera-
tion when the law came into force that the Ameri-
can flag should only cover American built ships.
The material was cheap and plentiful in the coun-
try. Great rivers and a vast seaboard gave every
facility for the formation of building yards, and if
labour was expensive, living was cheap. The war
wrought a change. The necessaries of life became
in America enormously dear, and have raised in
proportion the cost of labour. From being almost an
untaxed country the United States have become the
most highly taxed of all countries. This has placed
shipwrights under a disadvantage in competing
with foreigners. At the same time that the change
we have described was taking place in the United
States a revolution was occurring in the ocean car-
rying trade. Steam is being substituted for sails,
and iron for wood.. The traffic between Liverpool
and New York is noiv almost wholly carried by iron
steam vessels. The practical effect of both these
changes, under the American Navigation Law, has
been to bar American merchants from any share in
the profits of their own carrying trade. The price
of iron in the United States is double what it is in
Great Britain. The price of labour is also double.
To build the ship in New York would cost twice as
much as to build a ship on the Clyde. To put engines
into her would make the proportion still greater
against the New York vessel. Yet, unless she be
built in America, she cannot fly the national flag.
The consequence is that New York houses are pre-
vented from establishing American lines and taking
their fair share in the carriage of the traffic in which
they are so deeply interested. If an American
wishes to engage in an undertaking of this sort his
only plan is to abandon his allegiance to his country,
establish himself in Europe, and adopt the country
whose ensign his vessels hoist. There is no question
here of Protection and of Free Trade. The question is
simply one of American exclusion from the traffic,
and it is simply thus, till circumstances change, that
the Honourable W. WELLS is invited to consider it.
Mr. SILVER does not ask that shipowners should be
permitted to purchase in foreign countries the
vessels employed in the American coasting traffic.
Ile holds it to be right that ships employed for
domestic purposes should be purely American, but
he maintains that American shipowners should not
be called on to pay double the European price for
vessels to be employed in the foreign trade. Such
a shrewd people as the Americans are not likely to
weight their merchants with a burden they cannot
bear in the race of foreign competition, while no
practical good is gained by the country. Neither
the exchequer nor the shipbuilders gain anything ;
while the merchants lose the benefit of being al-
lowed to carry their own produce, and into the
hands of foreign nations pass not only the manufac-
ture of the ships, but the profit of their employment
in the transport of American produce. The remedy
for a part, at least, of these evils is in the hands of
the American Government. Let them extend to
their merchants the privilege of purchasing ships in
the markets of the world to be registered in Ameri-
can ports as " foreign built " American ships to be
employed only in the foreign trade and covered by
the American flag. Mr. SILVER suggests that all
materials, machinery, &c., required in the con-
struction of ships to be employed in commerce be-
tween the United States and any foreign country
should be relieved from import duty, but he evi-
dently considers the plan we advocate to be the
best. And so it undoubtedly is. It is always ob-
jectionable to introduce exceptions to tariff regu-
lations. This places a power in the hands of the
officers of Customs which is liable to abuse. It
gives also to importers of foreign wares a means
of evading the law. The tendency is either to
establish a dishonest collusion between the
importer and Custom-house officer, or to create
endless disputes and appeals to the courts of the coun-
try. The American Navigation Law had its rise iu
circumstances now wholly changed, and must, both
in justice to American merchants and according to
the dictates of common sense, be repealed. It is
not the intention of the Legislature to deprive their
own citizens of carrying to foreign ports their own
produce, nor to convey their own people as pas-
sengers in ships flying. foreign flags, but as the law
now stands this must be so, and continue to be
hereafter even in a still greater degree, for the few
steam vessels built before the war, now plyingacross
the Atlantic, cannot last, and cannot be replaced,
except at a cost which would soon ruin their pro-
prietors. We trust that the American Government
will give immediate attention to this important
subject, and that those interested will back Mr.
SILVER'S appeal with the full weight of their power.
—Anglo-American Times.

The Political Situation•—The Proposition

of the Border States.

No careful observer can fail to see but that be-
twixt the President on the one hand, and Con-
gress on the other, the determination of the ona not
to be forced from the line of his policy, and that of
the others to crush the Executive, since they cannot
bend him to their purposes, that matters are re-
manded very nearly to their old position, so far as
the relative position of the sections is concerned,
much such as they occupied just previous to the
war. At that period in our history the claim of
the extreme South to make slavery the dominating
power, under the mischievous teachings of the South
Carolina politicians, was fairly balanced by those of
the extremists of the other section, to destroy with-
out hesitation what was guaranteed by the Consti-
tution itself ; whilst between these stood the so-
called Border States, deprecating the extreme action
of both sections, and striving—through Mr. Critten-
den, a Border State Senator—to give the country
peace. At that time the negro constituted the one
great element for the fashioning of parties ; the
abolishment of slavery being the watchword of the
North, the protection and extension of slavery, even
to the extent of organising a separate government
for this purpose, being the policy of the South.
Well, the whole thing culminated in war and the
destruction of the cherished institution, the great
bone of contention; the Border States holding up their
hands and deprecating the terrible conflict to the last
possible moment when it looked as if the conflict might
have been avoided. But the war went on, slavery
was destroyed, and the great mass of the people op-
pear to have thought that now, surely, if ever, there

must be " peace." But what do we see? What ,
are we called upon to deplore ? Why we see that
the negro is, if possible, a larger element than ever
for the stirring up of national strife ; that whilst the
South has given up slavery to the extent of abolish-
ing it by formal action of each State accepting the
amendments to the Constitution prescribed by Con-
gress, right behind this, despite any and every pro-
testation to the contrary, lies the cherished dogma
of ," negro suffrage," which, the pet measure of
Massachusetts (as in the olden time was the abolish-
ment of slavery), will never be permitted to be
dropped, even to the extent of thirty years more
quarrelling, if thereby the politicians of that school
can secure seats in Congress or consideration and
pelf anywhere. We say, then, that according to
the present position of affairs we are remanded to
the old position, very nearly, so far as getting rid of
the negro is at present to be hoped for by people
who desire peace ; the Border States Low, as then,
being "conservative" in their purposes and action,
and likely to remain so. For instance, Maryland
for one, with a population of some one hundred and
sixty thousand free coloured people within her bor-
ders, is not likely to tolerate in the slightest degree
the dogmas of Sumner and Henry Wilson in this
regard ; and although the Radical influence should
sweep Pennsylvania or Ohio, or, in fact, the whole
North, it will on these points just as surely stop at
the old line as it has at any time within the thirty
years past during which the negro has been constituted
an element of strife. And the same reasons will pre-
vail with the other Border States which prevail here.
We have shown recently that, let the President have
done what he might, short of enforcing negro suf-
frage by the power of the Federal Government, that
a quarrel would have been fastened upon him by
Sumner, Wilson, and Co., with the purpose of ac-
complishing his ruin ; and knowing this, aware that
he has been misrepresented and denounced by those
whose whole aim is to keep the negro in the politi-
cal arena as an element of party ascendancy, the
people of the Border States will continue to stand
by him, and go against those who are as unscru-
pulous about the means they resort to as they are
careless of evil consequences to the whole country.
And to throw odium upon the President, for the
purposes designated, all the machinery of party po-
litics has been brought into requisition. He has
been represented as desirous of forcing into COD -
gress—and without reference to his emphatic decla-
rations to the contrary—the disloyal representatives
of Southern States; when no point in his policy has
been more plainly declared than that one where he
makes loyalty the test of admission, insisting that if
representatives from the rebel States sought admis-
sion to the floor of Congress they could be excluded
on the showing of their ...lot being loyal men. Not
only has he been recklessly misrepresented in this
regard, but there is hardly any chance beside, out
of which radical ingenuity could torture an exhibit
to his detriment, but what has been made use of
with the uttermost alacrity. The neglect to try
Jeff. Davis ; every row or difficulty at the South,
and so on, have all been laid at his door ; whilst when
there was any scarcity of real materials from which to
inflame the minds of theirfollowers against him, they
have been manufactured to suit the needs of the
special occasion. And now, after this marked ex-
hibit of bad treatment ; after projecting grounds of
quarrel against him and badgering him to the last
extent of human endurance, those immaculate ob-
servers of all the decencies, Forney, Brownlow,
Thad. Stevens, Wendell Phillips, and their set—the
true leaders—fondly flatter themselves that they
have all their own way, that they even go the length
of an " impeachment." No men could be more
mistaken. The American people have reason to
believe in Andrew Johnson's honesty of purpose ;
in his patriotism ; in . his determination to stand by
the Constitution ; and remembering that the same
reckless troupe were the bitter assailants of Mr.
Lincoln in his lifetime, they will never desert the
present Executive, to leave him to the mercy of
foes so bitter in their malignity. Aware that no
one, however patient, however forbearing, could
have avoided their purpose to have a quarrel with
the Presidential incumbent, so long as the latter
could not give in to the darling project of having
negro suffrage proclaimed as the act of the Federal
Government, they will know how to judge between
him and his traducers, his bitter enemies ; the
Border States, as of old, constituting that line of
demarcation, that tribunal, too, whose protest must
be respected by the country at large. If Mr. Lin-
coln was right in his policy of conciliation, in his
determination to stand in the way of a spoliation
of the South, Andrew Johnson is right when h
seeks to pursue the same kindly and patrioti
policy ; and the people will never see him, on
such grounds, made the victim of deliberate wrong-
doing and injustice.—The Baltimore Weekly Com-
mercial.