The students should note several characteristic features of this balance sheet. (1) Only the items at the head of the columns are measured accurately: the others are “invisible” items, represented only by pieces of paper passing through the mail, but these are, pound for pound, of equal importance. (2) The inflow and outflow of bullion are large items, but nearly balance; England has acted as a clearing house for the payments of the world’s debts, and the distribution of the world’s gold. (3) In this period England re-invested in other countries most of the great sum due in interest and dividends. The English investor may be pictured as receiving a dividend check from the United States or South America, and as mailing it back instead of cashing it, asking that it be added to the capital sum of his investment. =449. Growth of the merchant marine.=—England was the leader among nations in the carrying trade in 1850, and retained her position still unchallenged at the close of the century. At the outbreak of the war in 1914 nearly half of the world’s steam tonnage was under the British flag; the tonnage of Germany, which came second on the list of countries, was not one-fourth of the British. The number of ships in the English merchant marine has actually decreased in this period of progress, but the carrying capacity has grown immensely by the increase in size of the ships and by the substitution of steam for sailing vessels. It will be remembered that the protection afforded by the navigation acts was removed before the beginning of this period. The government has made generous payments for the carriage of mails, but still has refused to pay regular subsidies or bounties for the encouragement of shipping. English shipping, nevertheless, has held its own. Of the steam shipping built in the twenty years preceding the war, two-thirds were built in the United Kingdom, and over one-half was built to sail under the British flag. While soon after 1850 the English merchant marine carried not much more than half of the foreign commerce of the country, the proportion grew in later years to two-thirds and nearly three-quarters. This proportion declined somewhat in more recent years, under the competition of Continental steamers, but it is estimated that in 1913 British shipping carried over one-half of the total sea-borne trade of the world, including nine-tenths of the trade inside the Empire, nearly two-thirds of the trade between the Empire and foreign countries, and nearly one-third (30%) of the trade between foreign countries.