estroyed many
of our ships--a reason ridiculously absurd, in view of the corollary
that the very destruction of those vessels should have stimulated
reproduction. Since that abortive attempt to steal bounties from the
Treasury for the benefit of a favored class of mechanics, Government,
occupied with matters deemed of greater importance, has totally
neglected our constantly diminishing mercantile marine.

By refusing to repeal the law that represses it, it may truly be said
that had every ingenuity been devised to accomplish its destruction,
its tendency to utter annihilation could not have been more certainly
assured than it has been by this obstinate neglect.

In the session of 1876, Senator Boutwell of Massachusetts renewed
the proposition of Mr. Lynch, but his Bill was not called up in the
Senate. In the course of intervening years a little more light may be
presumed to have dawned upon Congress, and, therefore, it is to be
regretted that the Senator did not obtain a hearing, in order that
the fallacy of his argument might have been exposed.

If any one cares to study the origin of our restrictive navigation
laws, he can consult a concise account of it given by Mr. David A.
Wells, in the _North American Review_, of December, 1877. It came
out of a compromise with slavery. The Northern States agreed
that slavery should be "fostered"--that is a favorite word with
protectionists--provided that shipbuilding should also be fostered,
and that New England ships--for nearly all vessels were built in that
district--should have the sole privilege of supplying the Southern
market with negroes!

That sort of slavery being now happily at an end, shipbuilders still
inherit the spirit of their guild, merely transferring the wrong they
perpetrated on black men by binding all their white fellow citizens
with the bonds of their odious monopoly. Moreover, although the
arbitrary law of the mother country forcing the colonists to conduct
their commerce in British built ships was one exciting cause of the
Revolutionary Rebellion, Americans had no sooner obtained their
independence than they created a monopoly quite as tyrannical among
themselves. And yet, they were not then without excuse. At the time
when the Convention for forming the Federal Constitution convened in
1789, every civilized nation was exercising a similar restrictive
policy. But while all of them have either totally abolished or
materially modified their stringent l