[Footnote AZ: Consul General Small, Halifax, in Con. Repts. (Dec.) 1905,
no. 303.]

[Footnote BA: The American Year Book, 1911.]

[Footnote BB: American Year Book, 1911.]

[Footnote BC: Lloyd's Register, 1910-11.]




CHAPTER III

FRANCE


France has been rightly termed the bounty-giving nation _par
excellence_.[BD] She first adopted a policy of State protection of
native shipping in the middle of the sixteenth century with the
enactment (1560) of an exclusive Navigation Act, forbidding her subjects
to freight foreign vessels in any port of the realm, and prohibiting
foreign ships from carrying any kind of merchandise from French
ports.[BE] This was followed up in the next century with the institution
of the direct bounty system to foster French-built ships.[BD]

In the reign of Louis XIV, Colbert, Louis's celebrated finance minister,
perfected (about 1661) an elaborate system of navigation laws, evidently
copied from the rigorous English code. This was directed primarily