re waste of time and loss of life, more consumption of
human means, than would buy up at the present moment all the slavery
existing in the world!

How has it done this? You will ask the question with surprise, I have
no doubt.

Simply, then, by its not only having retarded the progress of
improvement in ship-building--one of the most important arts in the
possession of man--but actually by its having thrown the art _backward_
by hundreds of years. And thus came the evil to pass: the owner--or he
who was to be the owner--of a new ship, seeing no means of avoiding the
heavy tax, was desirous of reducing it as much as possible, for
dishonesty of this kind is the certain and natural result of
over-taxation. He goes to the ship-builder; he orders him to build a
vessel with such and such measurements of keel, beam and depth of hold--
in other words, of such tonnage as will be required to pay a certain
amount of tax. But he does not stop there: he desires the builder, if
possible, to make the vessel otherwise of such capacity that she will
actually contain a third more of measured tonnage than that for which
the tax is to be paid. This will lighten his tax upon the whole, and
thus enable him to _cheat the government_ that has put such a grievous
impost upon his enterprise.

Is it possible to build a ship of the kind he requires? Quite so; and
the ship-builder knows he can accomplish it by swelling out the vessel
at the bows, and bellying her out at the sides, and broadening her at
the stern, and altogether making her of such a ridiculous shape, that
she will move slowly, and become the grave of many a hapless mariner.
The ship-builder not only knows that this can be done; but, complying
with the wishes of the merchant-owner, he does it, and has done it for
so long a period that he has grown to believe that this clumsy structure
is the true shape of a ship, and would not, and could not, build any
other. Nay, still more lamentable to state: this awkward form has so
grown into his thoughts, and become part of his belief, that after the
foolish law is repealed, it will take long, long years to eradicate the
deception from his mind. In fact, a new generation of ship-builders
will have to be waited for, before ships will appear of a proper and
convenient form. Fortunately, that new generation has already sprung up
beyond the Atlantic, and by their aid we shall get out of this hundred
years' dilemma a little sooner. Eve