The first effect of hostilities on England’s maritime commerce and shipping seems to have been to reduce the nominal value of the cargoes exported from 41,411,966_l._ in 1802 to 31,438,985_l._ in 1803. The next effect was to introduce into the carrying trade of Great Britain an extra supply of one hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen tons of foreign vessels, whilst the third was to lessen, by one hundred and seventy-three thousand nine hundred tons, her own mercantile shipping; so that the success which had attended the business of the shipowner during the previous war no longer accompanied him, especially during the earlier period of the renewal of hostilities, the majority of this class suffering heavy losses. The owners of neutral vessels, while enjoying many other privileges, had likewise the advantage of obtaining from the Baltic and elsewhere the materials necessary for the construction of their vessels, at less cost than the British shipowners. The English government also levied a heavy tax on timber, hemp, canvas, and other articles requisite for the conduct of their business, and insisted on licenses being taken out, and bonds given to the commissioners of customs for the construction and navigation of their ships. [Sidenote: Complaints of English shipowners.] Against these and other special burdens British shipowners now loudly, and not without cause, complained. They remarked, with much force, that it was of the last importance that their vessels should trade on equal terms with those of other nations, but that “so long as they continued to be burthened with tonnage, convoy, port-duties, extra insurance, heavy taxes for docks, canals, tunnels, and _a thousand other water-brain schemes_, they will continue to drag on a miserable existence, till even the profitable concerns of _ship-breaking_ shall be seen no more.”[261] Had their complaints been confined to the special burdens with which they were afflicted, the sympathy of the country would have gone with them; but when they formed an association, which had for its object the maintenance of the old navigation laws in their original integrity, they received no support even from Mr. Pitt, a leading member of whose Administration declared “that however wise and salutary the navigation laws might have been in the infancy of our commerce, he did not perceive the efficacy of them at present, and the necessity of strictly adhering to their original provisions.” This truth was, indeed, at last beginning to break forth upon the world; but it still required many years to convert the shipowners to what they not unnaturally regarded as a heretical doctrine.