an owner, to the extent of the merest fraction, in an American ship, the tonnage taxes on such ship are immediately increased to sixty cents, or doubled; and the vessel at once ceases to be entitled to registry or enrolment as a vessel of the United States. Here, then, is a direct, odious, and stupid discrimination against the employment of foreign capital, provided it should so incline, for the developing of the American shipping interest, and the employment of labor even in our own dockyards and harbors. Supposing a similar law to be proposed, discriminating in like manner against the investment of foreign capital in American railroads, mines, factories, and mercantile enterprises generally, does any one doubt that the proponent would be at once hooted into contempt? And yet the hypothetical law is no more absurd than the law that actually exists upon the statute-book. It was, however, in respect to these same laws, that the Republican State Convention of Maine, in August, 1877, unanimously resolved, that, "enacted in the infancy of the republic, they have proved their wisdom by long and varied experience. They embody the matured judgment of three generations of commercial men. Any radical change in these laws would be detrimental to the highest interests of American commerce, and a damaging blow to the national independence of the country." The question naturally suggests itself, Was there one single man in this same convention that had any clear and definite knowledge of how these laws originated, what they embody, and what is the sphere of their influence?

At the period of the enactment of our navigation laws, 1789, 1817, all other maritime nations had similar codes. But since then all maritime nations, except the United States, have either greatly modified the old-time restrictions which they once imposed on the building and use of vessels, or abolished them altogether. In this reform work Great Britain took the lead, at the very time (1849) when the competition of the United States with that nation, for the carrying trade of the world upon the high seas, was most severe, and when whatever of benefit could possibly accrue from restrictive navigation laws to Great Britain was especially likely to be manifested. But the majority of British legislators and people had come to realize, after an experience of near five centuries (the first British navigation acts dating back to 1381), that the general effect of such laws was injurious and not beneficial. There

was, furthermore, a more special stimulus acting on the British mind, at the period in question, in favor of a liberal maritime policy. Ships were then built exclusively of wood. The United States could build cheaper and better ships than England because the advantage in the material and skill for building was with us; and England, recognizing this fact, repealed all restrictions in the way of her subjects purchasing American ships, as a condition essential to enable them to meet American competition on the ocean on anything like equal terms. (How the United States failed in wisdom when the conditions were reversed, will be shown hereafter.) By act of Parliament, therefore, in 1849, all British navigation laws of a restrictive character, with the exception of such as pertained to the coasting-trade, were repealed; and in 1854 the British coasting-trade also was thrown open without restriction to the participation of all nations.*

These measures, as was to be expected, encountered great opposition throughout the kingdom; and predictions were freely indulged in, by such men as Disraeli and Lord Brougham, that henceforth "free trade in shipping would destroy the ship-building trade in Great Britain, ruin British ship-owners, and drive British sailors into foreign vessels."+ None of these anticipations and

It is now well known that the reason why the coasting-trade of Great Britain was not made free in 1849, in connection with British foreign trade, was because of the unwillingness of the United States to make any reciprocal maritime concessions.

+ Mr. Disraeli concluded a long attack upon the first bill repealing the British navigation laws in the following words, which would seem to have served as a model for nearly all the statesmen of the restrictive school in the United States from that time onward: "Will you, by the recollections of your past prosperity, by the memory of your still existing power, for the sake of the most magnificent colonial empire in the world, now drifting away amid the breakers, for the sake of the starving mechanics of Birmingham and Sheffield, by all the wrongs of a betrayed agriculture, by all the hopes of Ireland, will you not rather, by the vote we are now coming to, arrive at a decision which may to-morrow smooth the careworn countenance of British toil, give growth and energy to national labor, and at least afford hope to the tortured industry of a suffering people?" The appeal was, however, powerless, and the prophecy of doom never was fulfilled.

Lord Brougham also spoke of the laws that it was proposed to repeal, as having long been considered, "not only as the foundation of our glory and the bulwark of our strength, but the protection of our very existence as a nation." And after the repeal was carried, a prominent opponent of the measure is reported to have said that the next consistent thing for the House of Commons to do was to unite in singing "Yankee Doodle."

predictions were, however, realized. But, on the contrary, while the tonnage of the United Kingdom remained almost stationary from 1816 to 1840, increasing, during that period of twenty-four years, to the extent of only 80,118 tons, it began to increase immediately and coincidently with the removal of British protective duties in 1842; gaining 901,550 tons between 1842 and 1849, and after the repeal of the navigation laws in 1849, shooting up from 3,485,000 tons in 1849 to 5,328,000 tons in 1863 and 6,152,000 in 1875.

The business of building ships in the United States for ocean navigation began to increase about the year 1845, and culminated in 1855. After this latter year it declined with extraordinary rapidity. Nevertheless, at the period of the breaking out of the war in 1861, the tonnage of the United States engaged in the international carrying trade of the world was larger than that of all other nations combined, with the exception of Great Britain. The decline in American ship-building subsequently to 1855 was undoubtedly in a great degree owing to the substitution of steam for sails, and of iron for wood as a material for the construction of vessels; coupled with the advantages which Great Britain at that time possessed in the manufacture and working of iron. But it was just at this time, and under such circumstances, that our navigation laws proved most injurious to our commercial marine; for had it not been for the prohibitions which they imposed on American citizens from buying and acquiring titles to foreign-built ships, American merchants, following the example of the merchants of other countries, would have undoubtedly bought and used the best tools for their trade, no matter where made, and have thus maintained themselves on terms of equality with their British competitors. As it was, however, our laws reinforced in our people that sentiment of moral inertia which always tends to antagonize what is new, and strengthen the disposition to stick by what is old; and no substitutions for ships of the old pattern being made by the building at home, or the purchase from abroad, of ships of the improved type, the decay in the ocean tonnage of the United States, already commenced, continued without interruption. Then came the war, and the Confederate cruisers, which wellnigh drove the American mercantile marine from the ocean; and after the war the increased cost of all naval construction and all

domestic commodities, consequent upon the imposition of high taxes, national and State,* and the use of bad money, alike prevented ships from being built and ship's cargoes of American merchandise from being profitably transported for sale to any foreign market, and under these several and in part continued influences the United States finds itself to-day without ships ready to do the work that through change in circumstances has to a certain extent become ready for the ships to do.

With this presentation of the causes of the decay of American commerce, or rather shipping, since 1855, the way is now clear for a consideration of the methods and feasibility of bringing back and profitably using ships of the most desirable character, as instrumentalities in the work of creating new markets for the surplus products of the industry of the United States.

DAVID A. Wells.

* In 1869 Franklin W. Smith, treasurer of the then Atlantic Iron Works of Boston, presented to the Committee on Commerce of the United States House of Representatives a detailed statement, showing that the cost of an iron ship of one thousand tons' burden would at that time be increased, by reason of the taxes, and the premium on gold, to the extent of $20,906 over and above the cost of a precisely similar vessel constructed in a British shipyard. On a wooden ship, of like tonnage, the increased expenditures at the same period, by reason of internal taxes and duties on imports, were estimated as between $ 6,500 and $7,000.

ART. X.- THE ULTRAMONTANE MOVEMENT IN CANADA.

CANADA is accorded at Rome that distinction in North America which among European nations is expressed by the envied designation, "the eldest son of the Church." And while Spain has sometimes, as at the Council of Trent, disputed with France the practical pre-eminence in Europe, Canada stands in this part of the American continent without a rival. The city of Quebec is awarded the honor of being the proud mother of sixty dioceses.* The Province of Lower Canada (now Quebec), which the rising tide of ultramontanism bore along with it, is now among the most demonstrative in its obedience to Rome.

More than to any other individual the ultramontane movement owed its propulsion to Mgr. Ignace Bourget, who was Bishop of Montreal for a period of thirty-six years, and whose resignation took place in 1876. Contrary to the usual custom of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, he admitted the new departure, and publicly rejoiced in the establishment of a "New School." This New School" approves everything the Pope approves, and condemns everything that the Pope condemns; consequently it rejects liberalism, philosophy, Cæsarism, rationalism, indifference." It is the glory of this school to follow in every particular the teaching of Rome, and to prove its sincerity by its acts. As Pontifical Zouaves, between five and six hundred of them took up arms and flew to the defence of the Holy See, when the civil power of the papacy was in the agony of dissolution; and in the hour of defeat they only laid down their swords to take up the pen to defend the cause they had espoused. In each capacity they served, in turn, with all the ardor and devotion of youth. There were among them descendants of the old noblesse and members of other bonnes familles who could appear to advantage in the drawing-room, and

* Bull of Pope Pius IX., May 15, 1876.

+ Circulaire of Bishop Bourget, March 19, 1872.

"Nous sommes heureux de compter plusieurs de nos Zouaves, qui consacrent leur plumes à la défense du St. Siége, ne pouvant faire servir leurs épées à la garde de la Ville Sainte."—Ib.