Show AMERICAN SHIPPIIVG The revival of American shipping is a subject of national interest and appeals ap-peals to the national pride The decline of the shipping Interests of this country has long been a source of mortification ha Jortifcaton and has lost to us millions of dollars a year The restoration of our mercantile mercan-tile marine would be a great boon and ought t < be encouraged by every legitimate legiti-mate means The protective policy of the last thirty thir-ty years has not accomplished anything in i this direction that can be pointed to with pride even by the most boastful of apologists for Republican methods Free trade in ships may strike some of them with horror but it is evident that the opposite policy has killed our ocean carrying trade The New York Herald shows that under un-der the old protective tariffs of Henry Hen-ry Clay enacted in 1828 and 1812 moderate mod-erate as those tariffs were compared with McKinleys American shipping made but little progress and at times dragged along heavily and wearily But under the Polk freetrade tariff in force from IS 10 to 187a tariff which imposed i an average duty on imports of about twentythice per cent ad valo rem our commercial marine grew rapIdly rap-Idly i to gigantic proportions more than doubling its tonnage and rivalling that of England on every ocean The New England historian Schou ler h descn > lng the effects of the low tariff from 1846 to 1857 says This free trade tendency gave in the first place a splendid impulse to American Ameri-can commerce Our sails whitened the remotest seas Our flag bore and brought back Next agriculture prospered pros-pered and It was most of all the prospect pros-pect of supplying the wide population of the British empire with American food products as well as with American cotton that caused the Polk tariff of 1816 to be enacted after Peel had I swung open the gates of British ports I invitingly i And had our manufactures been swamped by the Interchange that followed On the contrary they grew and prospered for that best of all bounties I boun-ties was afforded them raw materials undurdened by taxation and the widest possible market with the universe I The Fithian bill before Congress will open up this subject for full discussion and it is to be hoped that out of it will come something practical which I will restore the old prestige of the i American marine and aid inestablish Ing l that prosperity which wlll be impeded im-peded as long as we are commercially crippled by the present system I |