of lighthouses, lightships, buoys, beacons, and fog-signals, and for removing dangerous wrecks, on the ground that these should be a public charge, like highways. It is stated that Great Britain and Turkey are the only countries which levy light dues, although possibly other countries raise dues of this kind under other forms. There are signs that the abolition of these dues will come, though hitherto every Chancellor of the Exchequer has consistently opposed it.
Perhaps the most deliberate method by which some countries put a restraint upon British shipping is what is called the reservation of coasting-trade. This is simply the reserving, by certain nations, of the trade between their own ports exclusively to their own ships. Nearly half the countries of the world have adopted this system, and the tendency appears to be growing, so that the area for British trading is being slowly but surely reduced. What makes matters more noticeable is the extended interpretation which the United States and Russia give to the term 'coasting trade.' They do not consider it only to mean steaming from one of their ports to another along the coast, but from one of their ports to another anywhere in the world. Thus, it is a coasting journey from New York to Boston, or from Odessa to Sebastopol; but it is also a coasting journey, prohibited to foreign ships, from San Francisco to Honolulu, or from Riga in the Baltic to Vladivostok in the east of Siberia. France adheres to the same doctrine in connection with French ports and Algeria. In another particular, peculiar to France, British ships are at a further disadvantage. This is the surtaxe d'entrepôt, which is a double duty charged on all goods sent to France from abroad and transhipped in a non-French port on their way. For instance, a large ship coming from Bombay, with 5,000 tons of cargo for London and 100 tons for Havre, could only tranship in London these 100 tons into a steamer plying to Havre by paying double French duty on every ton. Failing that, the large steamer must first call at
