Then look at home. First calculate the sum of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars that has been annually paid by us to those foreigners for transporting ourselves and our merchandise. Then go back in memory to the time when in the days of sailing ships, our packets almost monopolized the ocean on account of the skill of our officers and seamen. Reflect that if a policy of ordinary foresight had prevailed in our national councils when these sailing ships were killed off by the competition of the newly-invented iron screw, their old commanders and their noble crews would have kept their employment, and as they died would have been succeeded by men as worthy as themselves, adding to our revenue in time of peace, and, when needed, supplying a navy now maintained at an immense expense--God save the mark!--for the protection of an extinct merchant service! See how few American steamship offices, how few repairing shops we have need of for these foreigners, who employ their own agents instead of our merchants, and naturally endeavor to do all the work required upon their vessels at home. Then search for the American shipowners engaged in trade beyond the seas. Look for them in their deserted counting-rooms of South street, in New York. As their old captains have retired in poverty and are begging for such offices as that of inspector or port warden, or for same subordinate place in the Custom-House, while the seamen are mostly dead with none to come after them, so South street is abandoned by its honorable merchants, who have, in too many cases, moved up to Wall street, and become gamblers by being deprived of their original business. When you have done all this, finish up your investigation by estimating how much sooner the rebellion might have been overcome, if in years past we had owned our share of the world's shipping, and multiply the $130,000,000 of freight money we annually pay to foreigners by the number of years we have been engaged in this suicidal policy of protecting them in earning money that of right belonged to our own people! Having sketched this result of American legislation, let us glance at that of other nations in late years for it is as useless to dwell upon what it was a century or two centuries ago as it would be to study the navigation laws of the Phoenicians, or to inquire if Solomon exacted that the ships bringing his spices from India and his gold from Ophir should be of Jewish construction. Old things did not pass away and all things did not fairly become new until the discovery of gold in California and Australia revolutionized values, created universal national intercourse, and by thus giving a sudden impetus to commerce, made the carrying trade an industry of far greater importance than it had ever been before.