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THE PANAMA CANAL CONTROVERSY
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the protection which Great Britain alleges the Treaty has given to her shipping. 'Coastwise' is not a term of art, it has no precise limits, its construction and extent depend on the municipal law of each country and vary according to that law. In England coastwise trade is open to the ships of all flags, but in the United States and many other countries it is reserved for the ships of nationals. But the extent of the reservations is not uniform. It may be limited to voyages from port to port which do not involve the crossing of the open sea or the passage through the territorial waters of some other State; on the other hand, it may be extended to cover distant voyages across open seas with calls at foreign ports. The coastwise trade of France includes voyages between French ports in the Channel and Atlantic and those in the Mediterranean; Russian law treats the trade between her European ports and Vladivostock by any route as coastwise trade; and the law of the United States takes an even wider view, for under it trade between any port of the United States and the Philippines or the Hawaiian Islands or Porto Rico is coasting trade. It follows that American vessels trading between New York and the ports of Washington State on the Pacific Coast, or between New York and Manila, to take two instances, are all to be within the tolls exemption. It is manifest that trade of so wide an extent as this must compete with foreign-going ships. For instance, take the case of trade to the Western coast of the United States. British ships going from London to San Francisco through the Canal must pay tolls, and those tolls must increase the cost of the goods delivered at San Francisco, and thereby make them the less able to compete with goods from New York to the same port. More than that, the exemption would tend to divert even foreign trade from British bottoms to the free vessels of