The immediate effect of conditional relaxation would be to give vessels of such States as conferred privileges on our shipping corresponding advantages in our ports. Such a course would be in accordance with precedent and experience; was demanded by justice, and would be found easier of execution than the plan proposed by the Queen’s Government. There was in his mind an insuperable objection to any form of retaliation. Every word urged against the system of reciprocity told with augmented force against that of retaliation. He would join in opposing that feature of the plan, regarding it, as he did, as a material defect. But if Government would not consent to legislate on the subject, conditionally, he would advise it to do so directly, without the accompaniment of retaliation. In fact, the conditional system was that on which we now, practically, acted with regard to many of the maritime nations of the world. [Sidenote: Views on the subject of the coasting trade.] [Sidenote: Americans not Free-traders.] [Sidenote: Smuggling in the coasting trade.] There was another feature in the Government proposition Mr. Gladstone regarded as defective. He was of opinion that the mode in which it proposed to deal with the coasting trade would be found ineffectual. Before we could expect to get the advantage of the American coasting trade we must throw our own unreservedly open to that country.[110] Any chance we could have of getting from America a share of her coasting trade must depend upon our offering her our entire coasting trade, leaving her perfectly free to accept it or not, under the regulations now affecting British ships engaged in it. But we must not expect of America that she would fetter herself towards other countries by those particular regulations which it was proposed to lay down, and which do not give up the whole coasting trade, but only portions of it; to any such regulations we could not expect that America would agree. “If we proceed by _un_conditional legislation, and offer up our colonial trade instead of giving up our coasting trade, I believe she will get our colonial trade, and may then be ready to give up some comparatively insignificant advantages in return; _but America is not a lover of Free-trade in the abstract_. The Protectionist principle is very strong in America,” he continued, “although it is not so strong with reference to shipping as to manufactures.”[111] For these and other reasons Mr. Gladstone insisted on the expediency of throwing open the coasting trade to the foreigner, “if he could find his way into it.”[112] At present the uniform and invariable rule, he added, is to insist on the strictest possible separation between the outward and inward-bound goods, between foreign trade goods and goods coastwise; and, in point of fact, with a system of drawbacks and high duty goods, there would be the greatest danger to the revenue, or we must undergo the most enormous expense, if we do not insist on the separation