those of a rudder or a drag, and a "revolution from above" is clearly not one of them.

Is it, perchance, because real Conservatism is understood or practised by no one in France, because it acts there as a handcuff, and not as a rudder or a drag, that France has never yet been able to establish a well-balanced and durable government? One is tempted to think so, and to attribute the constantly recurring political difficulties of the French to the insufficiencies of their Conservatism, even more than to the extravagances of their Radicalism.

Before this article is published the results of the elections will be known. But whatever be these results, they will provide no solution of the difficulties of the position. If the Conservatives obtain a majority, they will drag the country into new dynastic quarrels. If the Liberals retain their ascendency, they will assuredly employ it, not only to consolidate the Republic, but also to tie the hands of the Conservatives for the future. In both cases the cause of true liberty will suffer.

The responsibility of the damage done to France and to liberty will rest on the heads of the men who originated the folly of the 16th of May.

A PARIS RESIDENT.

ART. IX. HOW SHALL THE NATION REGAIN PROSPERITY?

PART III.

Our Navigation Laws: their Origin and Influence.

THE truth of the following propositions may be assumed as thoroughly established: First, that the producing capacity of the United States, especially for its so-called manufactured products, owing to our great natural resources, and our wonderful utilization of brains and machinery, is far in excess of our utmost possible requirements for domestic consumption. Enlarged markets in foreign countries for the sale of our accumulated products are therefore the first national necessity of the hour; and until they are obtained, the people of the United States may be sure that there are no good times ahead, and no full and profitable employment for all their labor and capital. We shall continue, as now, "smothered in our own grease." This limitation of our foreign markets, existing in a degree that has absolutely no parallel in the modern history of civilized nations, is referable to various agencies, the first and foremost of which is the maintenance, on our part, of a fiscal (tariff) policy, which has obstructed or absolutely prevented reciprocal trade between the United States and all foreign nations, and which has sought to sell to the people of Chili, Buenos Ayres, Australia, Cape of Good Hope, and all other countries the very largest possible amount of the products of our labor and to buy in return the very smallest possible amount of the products of their labor. So long as such a policy is continued, any large and profitable foreign commerce for the United States is simply an impossibility.

But supposing, for example, as is undoubtedly the case, that the United States can now produce and sell cotton fabrics, agricultural implements, hardware of all descriptions, gunpowder, railroad supplies, boots and shoes, and many other commodities which the South American states want in large quantities, to greater advantage than can the countries of Europe; and supposing all obstacles

in the way of these states paying directly for what they may buy of us with their own special products-copper, wool, and the like to be removed, so far as they can be, by a revision of our tariff,— something more would be requisite even then, in order that our trade and commerce may be fully developed and increased. The markets where the exchanges in question are to take place are not Boston, New York, and Baltimore, but Valparaiso, Buenos Ayres, and Rio Janeiro; and to reach these markets ships running regularly, speedily, and with the maximum of economy, are essential. And these ships, furthermore, must be steamers, for the transportation of valuable merchandise by sailing vessels for any considerable distances has become almost obsolete. But at present the United States, speaking comparatively, has neither ships nor steamers for this work. At present this country cannot boast of so much as even a single line running to the east coast of South America; while to the west coast we have but one, running bimonthly from Boston to Valparaiso, established by a mercantile firm of the former city as a matter of experiment and for their own special trade convenience. On the other hand, Europe sends one steamer a day on the average to Brazil and the La Plata, and seven per month to the Pacific coast; England, as might be expected, taking the lead in this business, but France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany also actively participating. Any advantages over Europe which the United States may enjoy in respect to the cost of production of cotton fabrics and other commodities are, therefore, not only counterbalanced, but so much more than counterbalanced, by the advantages which Europe possesses over the United States in respect to facilities for transportation and the cost of freights to most of the South American markets, that the wonder is, not that our merchants and manufacturers export so little, but rather that under the circumstances they are able to export anything. If to-day it is desired to send goods expeditiously from the United States to Buenos Ayres, Montevideo, Rio Janeiro, or Pernambuco, the only way is to ship them first to England, and then reship them; and the freight from New York to Liverpool, with the commissions, expenses of reshipment, and insurance (at nearly double the rates charged in Europe), all constitute additions to the price of the American goods, from which the goods of the foreign manufacturers are exempt. To transport goods from New

York to the west coast of South America (Peru or Chili), from New York by steamer (via the Isthmus), is reported to cost $44 per ton gold; and from England, $15 to $ 20. From Europe, by rail, to the west coast the cost is reported at from $3 to $ 6, and from the United States at from $10 to $12. Cheap, therefore, in comparison with European products, as are many of our manufactured articles at the present time in the home market, the only thing an American manufacturing exporter can boast about them, when they reach a foreign market, is their quality, and not their price.

Under such a condition of affairs the question naturally arises, How is it that the United States, formerly a maritime power of the first class, has no ships or steamers that can now profitably compete for the carrying of even its own exports, not merely with the ships of our great commercial rival, England, but also with those of Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Germany? How is it that the commercial tonnage of our nearest maritime neighbors, the British Provinces, as well as that of Great Britain, increases year by year, while the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States had nothing better to report to the nation in December, 1876, than a decrease of over thirty-one per cent in the tonnage of vessels built in this country in 1876, as compared with the returns of the preceding year, 1875? The answer is to be found in a variety of circumstances; prominent, if not first among which, are our so-called "navigation laws," the nature and operation of which, to a majority of our citizens, are as much of a mystery as are the laws of the ancient Persians. Out of the three hundred and seventy-eight members of Congress, it is safe to assert that there are not fifty that can at once define the difference between a vessel "enrolled" and a vessel "registered"; and very few officials in the custom's service or Treasury Department that can at once tell correctly and in detail how to transfer the license of a merchant-ship or pleasure-yacht from one collection district of the United States to another. It is time, therefore, to say a word about these same navigation laws; how

It required some of the best legal talent in the city of New York during the past winter to effect this result in the case of a pleasure-yacht; and the owner of the yacht, under date of June 4, 1877, writes that, although he has done his best, and incurred considerable expense and no end of trouble, to find out the law and comply with it, he is in daily expectation of a visit from the revenue officials of the United States, and a notification of a fine for some violation of the statutes.

they originated; what are their provisions, and something of their influence. And first about their origin.

When the convention that framed the Federal Constitution came together in 1789, there were two sectional questions of importance that came before it, and two only, the question of slavery, and the regulation of commerce. The extreme Southern States wanted slavery and the slave-trade legalized and protected. The South, as a whole, also favored free trade. New England, on the other hand, largely interested in shipping, a not insignificant proportion of which, either directly or indirectly, was engaged in the slave-trade (her people, Massachusetts men especially, importing molasses from the West Indies, distilling it into rum, using the rum to buy slaves on the coast of Africa, and selling the slaves at the South), desired, through a system of navigation laws, to hold a monopoly of the commerce of the new nation; while the Middle States generally wanted neither slavery nor navigation laws. The sentiment of the country as a whole, at this period, was averse to slavery, and, the cultivation of cotton not having then been introduced to any considerable extent into the Southern States, or made the source of profit that it subsequently became through the invention of the cotton-gin, the antislavery feeling had developed itself much more strongly in some parts of the South than it had in New England. So that if New England had been as true to the great

* "The sentiment was common to Virginia, at least among the intelligent and educated, that slavery was cruel and unjust. The delegates from Virginia and Maryland, hostile to navigation laws, were still more warmly opposed to the African slave-trade. Delaware by her constitution, Virginia and Maryland by special laws, had prohibited the importation of slaves. North Carolina had shown a disposition to conform to the policy of her Northern sisters, by an act which denounced the further introduction of slaves into the State as 'highly impolitic.'" (Hildreth, Vol. III. pp. 508-510.) Pennsylvania founded a society for the abolition of slavery in 1775, with Franklin for its first president, and Rush its first secretary. New York had a similar society in 1785, with Jay as its first president and Hamilton as his successor? On the other hand, as some illustration of the then current New England sentiment, attention is asked to the following extract from an oration by Hon. David Daggett (afterwards United States Senator and Chief Justice of Connecticut), at New Haven, July 4, 1787, - a month before the Federal Convention, then in session, took up the subject of slavery and the navigation laws. The orator, after speaking of the gratitude and generous reward the country owed to the officers and soldiers of the late army, and its immediate inability to discharge such obligations, continued:

"If, however, there is not a sufficiency of property in the country, I would project a plan to acquire it..... Let us repeal all the laws against the African slave-trade, and