THE MERCANTILE MARINE
By EVELYN CECIL, M.P.
From the days of Queen Elizabeth our commercial fleet has grown with wonderful regularity, and its growth has been commensurate with, or an indication of, the growth of the British Empire. It is not too much to say that the Empire and our commercial fleet stand or fall together. Dominion in former times depended upon conquest; now, fortunately, it rests more largely upon peaceful expansion and the reciprocity of commercial ties. Commerce cannot be divorced from merchant shipping, and whatever is beneficial to our merchant shipping is also beneficial to our commerce. Any benefit of this nature strengthens that important trade connection between ourselves and our Colonies which mutual regard, affection, and advantage have allied themselves to create.
The origin of our commercial fleet is to be traced, in a very considerable degree, to the period of the predominance in the sixteenth century, and for two hundred years afterwards, of the policy known in political economy as the mercantile system. It was a policy of encouraging shipbuilding, supporting fisheries, and promoting trading companies. The means used would not always commend themselves to modern schools of political economy. Elizabeth and Charles I. gave bounties for the construction of ships above a certain size. Fisheries were stimulated by giving bounties to some of the vessels employed in them, and upon the
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