them to equal American shipbuilders in skill, material and cost.

But, realizing that the interests of commerce and ship owning were of
infinitely greater value than that of mere shipbuilding, they did not
propose to lose them, while the latter industry should endeavor to
gain a new life. Regardless of any such consideration as that which
solely actuated our investigators, Parliament at once abolished the
prohibition to purchase foreign built ships. The greatest good of the
greatest number was the motive of this wise decision.

As soon as they were thus allowed to do so, English shipowners ordered
clippers from our shipyards, and putting them into profitable
employment under their own flag, kept on with their business, sharing
with us the supremacy of the seas, which but for the timely action of
their government they would inevitably have lost. In this way they
maintained it until there came a new era in shipbuilding, when
circumstances becoming reversed, their mechanics were enabled to
accomplish what ours could not, in the construction of iron screw
steamships. Had Congress then been as wise as Parliament was in 1849,
our shipowners would, in their turn, have maintained their prestige
by supplying themselves from abroad with the new vehicles of commerce
they could not procure at home, and we should never have heard of
"decadence." Instead of such obviously judicious action, it has done
nothing but condemn us year after year to enforced idleness in the
name of "protection." So we have endeavored to compete with these
new motors on the sea by means of wooden sailing ships and paddle
steamers, until they are of service only in our coastwise monopoly
or rotting at the docks, if not broken up. We have gone on steadily
protecting ourselves to death, and protecting England and Germany, the
chief of our rivals, to life at our own expense of vitality. England's
justice to her shipowners, which at first seemed harshness to her
shipbuilders, was eventually the means of their prosperity. It set
them to "finding out knowledge of witty inventions," and now they have
one hundredfold the capital invested and labor employed in iron
steamship building, more than ever found occupation in their old
shipyards.

In a recent address before the New York Free Trade Club, Mr. Frothingham
humorously described a visit made by him a few years ago to the studio
of an artist. He found him seated in despair, amidst a gallery of his
unfinished pic