The policy of Secretary Whitney was in fact an echo of the sturdy patriotism that framed the Act of December 31, 1792, dictated by the same impulse of national independence and conceived in the same aspiration of patriotic pride. [Illustration: BATTLESHIP IOWA] And now, in the face of this record so fresh and recent, the same old demand for English free ships is heard again in our midst, promoted by the same old lobby and pressed on the same old lines. Are we never to hear the last of it? Is there to be a perennial supply of American legislators willing to promote a British industry by destroying an American one? To all history, to all logic, they oppose a single phrase: “Let us buy ships where they are cheapest.” Well, if national independence is valueless, and if everything is to be subordinated to cheapness, why not get our laws made in the House of Commons? The members of the House of Commons legislate for nothing. Senators and Representatives charge $5000 a year for their services, besides stationery allowance and mileage. The House of Commons makes laws cheaper than our Congress does. Our ships and our capacity to create them are as much a symbol of independence as our laws are; and if it is good policy to get the former where they are cheapest, why not get the latter on the same terms? British warfare against American ships and shipping by no means stopped at extravagant subsidies to her own ships; did not stop at determined, and thus far successful, efforts to defeat American legislation of a similar character; did not even stop at vigorous and often corrupt attacks upon our navigation laws through the lobbies of our own Congress. Of course, all these considerations at this writing (1903) have become ancient history. The iron ship has not only completely dominated British naval architecture, but that of all other European countries, and has established itself on an equally permanent and secure footing in the United States. A few wooden ships are still built in this country, but they are mostly schooners for the coastwise trade, and really cut little or no figure in commercial conditions outside of our own coast. Yet, although it be ancient history, viewed in the light of the enormous changes that have occurred in thirty or thirty-five years, still, it is instructive to know the springs and motives of the public statecraft and the private commercial strategy which forced the iron ship in and the wooden ship out. That this was bound to come in the nature of things does not admit of doubt; but it is equally clear that the policy of interested parties forced the situation in favor of British shipping interests, and at the time adversely to those of the United States both as to ship-owning and as to ship-building, which are inseparably interdependent.