knowledge of the existing state of the ship is necessary; and as this can only be obtained by frequent surveys, a body of able, confidential, and well-paid officers are requisite for that service. It is not enough to say, that the shipowners have, till lately, refused to incur the expense of such an establishment; expense was not the only objection, for its formation was also retarded by the opposition of parties among them, who, as is the case in all trades, had found a method of working the mischief to their own peculiar advantage. In defect of such actual knowledge, the registrar proceeded upon certain assumptions; and, according as the circumstances and history of the ship furnished the criterions for those assumptions, she was placed in a higher or in a lower class. The chief criterion was age; and for the purpose of keeping on the safe side, a very low age was adopted. The rule was inexorable; and, at the end of the term assigned, the good sound ship was as certainly degraded as the ship whose timbers would hardly hold together till her allotted time had expired. The first consequence of such a rule was, that men built ships as they would build houses upon short ground leases; and the reason for not incurring the cost of substantial repairs, as the term wore away, was as strong in the one case as in the other. Besides, ships so built are less susceptible of beneficial repairs than they would have been if the builders, at the time of their original construction, had acted under a different expectation.

Through the operation of such a system as this, the upper classes of ships were perpetually overflowing, in rapid succession, into the classes below them; and creating an excess of the lowest grade, which could obtain no relief from the glut except in the yard of the ship-breaker. The demand for first-class ships for the superior trades was not lessened by these absurd reductions of their particular numbers; and thus a large quantity of new-built ships, not wanted in the aggregate, was annually forced into existence by the necessity of supplying that demand.

The number of ships built since the war, computed in tonnage, form a total very nearly equal to our whole mercantile marine at this day, unduly enlarged as it is by the system we are discussing. Yet it must have happened,

from the nature of the war, that the peace commenced with a surplus. Assisted by a decrement which requires a total renovation in about twenty years, it is clear that nothing but a little patience and forbearance on the part of the trade is ever wanting, to let the undue number die off, and thus to remove the evils of an incidental excess. By their own miserable management, however, this forbearance from building fresh ships was rendered impossible ;-the "prudential check" could not be applied; and the trade was kept in a perpetual state of hopeless redundance, which even its "vice and misery" could not keep down. The " timber bounty" has been to the almsbegging shipowners what the " allowance system" was to far more pardonable paupers, and the analogy is as strong in the remedy as in the evil. An efficient "Lloyd's Registry” is at last established, and we have the most sanguine expectations of its beneficial consequences.

It was observed by one of the witnesses before the Committee, (Q. 129) "We possess iron and coals, and we have not got "wood; our case would be complete with the three. We act "towards wood as France acts towards iron." To whom, we ask, is the possession of wood of more importance than the shipping interest? Here, then, is another part of their noxious scheme of self-aggrandisement, at the expense of the best interests of the country, and even re-acting against themselves in no small degree. They compare in their minds the one benefit of good and cheap timber to themselves, with the other benefit to themselves of a long carriage, of bad and dear timber; and they submit to the evil of building bad ships at a great price, instead of good ones at a low price, rather than take their fair chance, with the country at large, in the benefits of a full development of its natural energies.

Now let us for a moment suppose that we had, after the necessity of the deviation had ceased, reverted to our older policy, of giving the country foreign timber upon the best terms, in addition to its indigenous productions of coal and iron;-that our rule for taking the tonnage of vessels had never held out a temptation to spoil their form;--and, also, that the manner of conducting marine insurance had been such, as to induce every man first to employ the best materials and the best workmanship in the building of his vessel; and, afterwards,

to preserve her condition as long as he could, by means of the most effectual repairs. Let us, we say, set these considerations on one side of the question; and, on the other, the postponement, till it was wanted, of the colonial wood-trade. It is clear that the shipowners, for their own good alone, have taken the worst course of the two. They have certainly, by that which they have pursued, greatly enhanced the difficulties of competing with their foreign rivals in other trades. The waste of shipping must throw a heavy loss on some party; and in whatever degree the shipowners are exposed to foreign competition they are, in that degree, baulked of their design that it should fall on the people. The magnitude of this waste must enhance the cost of insurance, and thus fall back upon the shipowners; while the excessive quantity of ships annually built, must greatly encourage competition among themselves.

Increased as the difficulty in competing with foreigners is by their own bad system, still the quantity of the carrying trade, in which they are exposed to it, is comparatively small. The coasting trade is entirely their own. In the • colonial trade, and in all voyages between British port and British port, in almost all parts of the world, there is no foreign interference; and a very large portion of our trade with foreigners is with countries, having no shipping, and from which the ships of other foreign countries are excluded. The Norway trade (which, on account of the shortness of the voyages, is not of much value) the British ships never had to any extent. They have all along stood their ground well with the Swedes; and the Prussians after a hard struggle, are beginning to yield. The shipping of Prussia is on the decline. The Russian ships have never stood any chance against the British: and the Dutch have had the folly to throw the trade with Holland into our hands. There is no pretence that we cannot keep pace with the French, the Portuguese, and the Spaniards, upon equal terms-in short, there is no branch of our commerce, except that with the United States of America, which either is not important, or which is not almost wholly possessed by our own shipping. Give but the British ship-owners fair play, only "save them from themselves," and nothing but that species of cupidity, which

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cannot bear to see a single farthing pass by its own clutches, would be able to suggest even the semblance of a complaint.

The general account which we have been just giving of the field of employment for our merchant shipping,-even under the operation of the system of reciprocity to which the shipowners choose to attribute grievances of their own creatingof this, we say, mighty field of employment may be the basis and introduction to the few remarks which we can find space for on that part of the subject of navigation which concerns our naval superiority.

Mr. Huskisson did not volunteer the reciprocity system: he would willingly have left other countries to have slept on, in their former supineness to our navigation laws, had they been disposed to do so. When he held out the hand of equal privileges, he did it in order to avoid--what he saw was approaching-a state of universal intercourse, the most hostile imaginable to commerce. Nothing, hardly, can be more anti-commercial than restriction in navigation. The basis of commerce is the diversity of productions in different places: this creates the necessity of moving those productions, in order that they may be universally enjoyed; and the first desideratum of commerce, which undertakes their distribution, is the facility of the removal.

Navigation, therefore, is subservient to commerce; and clear and strong should be the grounds of that institution, which should be allowed to reverse these relations. The necessity to us of a certain quantity of mercantile marine is fully admitted; and the question is-have we not enough of it?

Mr. Huskisson, to the honor of his great name, has left behind him ample proof that he well considered the subject of reciprocity with reference to the adequacy of the degree of maritime strength which would be retained for the country under the operation of a system which he saw so much occasion to introduce and his disinterested and statesman-like opinion upon that subject ought to prevail with the public over all the clamour which a body of interested traders may choose to raise against his measures. He explicitly stated to Parliament the grounds of his proceedings. He exhibited a comparison between the present peace establishment of our navy and its condition at the breaking out of any of our wars; he com

pared the present navies of the other nations of the world with former foreign navies at those epochs; and he brought out the gratifying fact, that our superiority is far more decided than it used to be. He then showed that, exclusive of any trade we might hope to acquire by carrying on a war of duties with the rest of the world, the present quantity of our mercantile marine was far beyond what it had been in those former times, when it was deemed adequate to all the purposes for which it was fostered by any direct assistance from the state. In short, he convinced the House that "navigation" was satisfied, and that "commerce" could be safely re-admitted to claim its rights. Where is the disinterested man who, upon trading principles, would sacrifice commerce to navigation?

Let us put one more question.-Suppose that, for some reason, the protective portion of the timber duty were levied on buildings, and collected, half-yearly, from door to door; and that the produce were distributed in bounties to the shipowners and colonists.-With what temper would a sum, quite equal to the late house tax, be so paid for such a purpose? The mode of collection and distribution does not alter the case;-and yet people, who almost rebelled against the house-tax, seem to court the charge of the timbertax!

ARTICLE X.

Notes addressed by the Plenipotentiaries of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, to the President and the Senate of the Free Town of Cracow. Dated the 9th and 16th of February, 1836.

Proclamations of General Kaufman, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Troops on the Territory of Cracow. Dated the 17th of February, 1836.

Nouvelle Constitution de la Ville libre de Cracovie. Dated the 30th of May, 1833.

Debate in the House of Commons on the Questions addressed to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs by Sir STRATFORD CANNING, on the 18th of March, 1836. In our number for last October, we laid before our readers the motives which then appeared to us sufficiently powerful