marine attained its greatest successes.

There is one school of modern economists who hold that the seeds
of decay and downfall were planted by this adoption of free trade
in 1828, while another faction of gentlemen quite as estimable
and authoritative will quote facts and figures by the ream to
prove that governmental policies had nothing whatever to do with
the case. These adversaries have written and are still writing
many volumes in which they almost invariably lose their tempers.
Partisan politics befog the tariff issue afloat as well as
ashore, and one's course is not easy to chart. It is
indisputable, however, that so long as Yankee ships were better,
faster, and more economically managed, they won a commanding
share of the world's trade. When they ceased to enjoy these
qualities of superiority, they lost the trade and suffered for
lack of protection to overcome the handicap.

The War of 1812 was the dividing line between two eras of salt
water history. On the farther side lay the turbulent centuries of
hazard and bloodshed and piracy, of little ships and indomitable
seamen who pursued their voyages in the reek of gunpowder and of
legalized pillage by the stronger, and of merchant adventurers
who explored new markets wherever there was water enough to float
their keels. They belonged to the rude and lusty youth of a world
which lived by the sword and which gloried in action. Even into
the early years of the nineteenth century these mariners still
sailed--Elizabethan in deed and spirit.

On the hither side of 1812 were seas unvexed by the privateer and
the freebooter. The lateen-rigged corsairs had been banished from