loudly or generally complained of.  Mr. W. S. Lindsay, writing in 1876, stated that the throwing open the coasting trade in 1855 had ’neither increased on the average the number of foreigners we had hitherto been allowed to employ in our ships, nor deteriorated the number and quality of British seamen.’  I have brought forward enough evidence to show that, as far as the merchant service was the proper recruiting ground for the British Navy, it was not one which was devoid of a considerable foreign element.

We may, nevertheless, feel certain that that element never amounted to, and indeed never nearly approached, three-fourths of the whole number of men employed in our ‘foreign-going’ vessels.  For this, between 50,000 and 60,000 men would have been required, at least in the last of the three wars above mentioned.  If all the foreign mercantile marines at the present day, when nearly all have been so largely increased, were to combine, they could not furnish the number required after their own wants had been satisfied.  During the period under review some of the leading commercial nations were at war with us; so that few, if any, seamen could have come to us from them.  Our custom-house statistics indicate an increase in the shipping trade of the neutral nations sufficient to have rendered it impossible for them to spare us any much larger number of seamen.  Therefore, it is extremely difficult to resist the conclusion that during the wars the composition of our merchant service remained nearly what it was during peace.  It contained a far from insignificant proportion of foreigners; and that proportion was augmented, though by no means enormously, whilst war was going on.  This leads us to the further conclusion that, if our merchant service supplied the navy with many men, it could recover only a small part of the number from foreign countries.  In fact, any that it could give it had to replace from our own population almost exclusively.

The question now to be considered is, What was the capacity of the merchant service for supplying the demands of the navy?  In the year 1770 the number of seamen voted for the navy was 11,713.  Owing to a fear of a difficulty with Spain about the Falkland Islands, the number for the following year was suddenly raised to 31,927.  Consequently, the increase was 20,214, which, added to the ‘waste’ on the previous year, made the whole naval demand about 21,000.  We have not got statistics of the seamen of the whole British Empire for this period, but we have figures which will enable us to compute the number with sufficient accuracy for the purpose in hand.  In England and Wales there were some 59,000 seamen, and those of the rest of the empire amounted to about 21,000.  Large as the ‘waste’ was in the Royal Navy, it was, and still is, much larger in the merchant service.  We may safely put it at 8 per cent. at least.  Therefore, simply to keep up its numbers—­80,000—­the merchant service would have had to engage fully 6400