At that epoch, our restrictive laws were productive of no harm to us, because it so happened that most of the business of the seas was done in wooden sailing ships, and it also happened, fortunately for us, that we had the faculty and the means of constructing them better and cheaper than they could be produced elsewhere. Accordingly our shipyards became wonderfully active in supplying the demands of our shipowners, and the _personnel_ as well as the material of our merchant fleet being of the highest character, it was consequently in active employment. In the ratio of the increasing value of our carrying trade there was a corresponding decrease in that of Great Britain, simply because her restrictive laws, which were the same then as ours are now, prevented her people from owning such magnificent clippers as we were able to build, on equal terms with us. But British statesmen were not inattentive to the situation. They wasted no time in appointing committees to investigate the cause of the difficulty, for it was as clear to them as the noonday sun, as clear as the occasion of our "decadence" should have been to the House of Representatives that appointed Mr. Lynch--as clear as it should be to the Congress now assembled. Parliament deputed no half dozen of its members to spend six months in running around among shipbuilders, asking them what bounty they required to build clippers like the Americans, and how long it would take 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.