There is another document which bears directly upon the present question. I refer to the interesting Report of Mr. Morse, our consul at London, made during the last year, and published by the Secretary of State. After a minute inquiry, the Report shows that on the breaking out of the Rebellion in 1861 the entire tonnage of the United States, coasting and registered, was 5,539,813 tons, of which 2,642,628 tons were registered and employed in foreign trade, and that at the close of the Rebellion in 1865, notwithstanding an increase in coasting tonnage, our registered tonnage had fallen to 1,602,528 tons, being a loss during the four years of more than a million tons, amounting to about forty per cent. of our foreign commerce. During the same four years the total tonnage of the British empire rose from 5,895,369 tons to 7,322,604 tons, the increase being especially in the foreign trade. The Report proceeds to say that as to the cause of the decrease in America and the corresponding increase in the British empire “there can be no room for question or doubt.” Here is the precise testimony from one who at his official post in London watched this unprecedented drama, with the outstretched ocean as a theatre, and British pirates as the performers:-- “Conceding to the Rebels the belligerent rights of the sea, when they had not a solitary war-ship afloat, in dock, or in the process of construction, and when they had no power to protect or dispose of prizes, made their sea-rovers, when they appeared, the instruments of terror and destruction to our commerce. From the appearance of the first corsair in pursuit of their ships, American merchants had to pay not only the marine, but the war risk also, on their ships. After the burning of one or two ships with their neutral cargoes, the ship-owner had to pay the war risk on the cargo his ship had on freight, as well as on the ship. Even then, for safety, the preference was, as a matter of course, always given to neutral vessels, and American ships could rarely find employment on these hard terms as long as there were good neutral ships in the freight markets. Under such circumstances there was no course left for our merchant ship-owners but to take such profitless business as was occasionally offered them, let their ships lie idle at their moorings or in dock with large expense and deterioration constantly going on, to sell them outright when they could do so without ruinous sacrifice, or put them under foreign flags for protection.”[82]