nd other products to Europe, and bringing back merchandise
therefrom in competition with the great fleet of foreign steamers to
whom we have given the monopoly of that business? By no means. It will
be found upon critical enquiry that every one of our home-built iron
steamers, excepting two or three in the W. India business, is built
for our coastwise trade or for some line that had been subsidized.
Even the three or four ships belonging to what is called the "American
Line," running between Philadelphia and Liverpool, may be said to be
subsidized, as without an entire remission of taxes from the State and
the aid of the Pennsylvania Railroad, they could not have been put
afloat.

Now, why cannot American shipbuilders compete on equal terms with
those of Great Britain? That they cannot is evident from the fact that
they do not; for it would be unreasonable to suppose that the ability
to sail ships, on the part of our seamen, vanished with the departure
of wooden vessels. It is true that we need a revision of other
maritime laws besides those under discussion, but it is sufficient
now to say that we cannot prove our ability to sail ships unless we
are permitted to own the ships we desire to sail.

Ships are but the tools of commerce, and if we have not the tools we
cannot do the work. Foreign mechanics cannot sell us these tools; our
own mechanics cannot provide them; therefore the workmen of the sea
are idle.

If one of Mr. Roach's theories is correct, if he can build steamships
cheaper and better than those we desire to buy, why does he object to
the introduction of an article that can do him no harm? If the other
is true, and undoubtedly it is, that he cannot build the ships that
are needed without the aid of a bounty or a subsidy, what then?
Manifestly, unless the prohibition to purchase such ships is removed,
it being the duty of Congress to protect the individual interests of
Mr. Roach and his confreres by subsidies, equal justice demands that
every person as well as every company who is forced to come to them
for ships, should be subsidized to the extent of the difference of
the cost of a ship in the United States, and that in the country where
they are most advantageously built, and this difference is at least
twenty-five per cent. Call it rather more or rather less as we please,
but a vast difference is on all hands acknowledged, and the fact
of our non-production proves it. The shipbuilders have already had