Thus, while our trade with Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, to increase which we have sacrificed the navigation laws, and inflicted a grievous wound upon our maritime strength, has either declined, or been altogether stationary for the last two years, that with our North American colonies has tripled during the same period, and now employs no less than 560,000 tons of our shipping; more than a fifth part of the whole British shipping employed in our foreign trade to every part of the world.

And here arises a most important observation, decisive as to the difference upon our maritime strength between the trade carried on under the reciprocity system, and in the most favourable circumstances, with a foreign country, and that maintained with our own colonies.

The trade with the United States of America, it has been seen, takes off about eleven millions of our manufactures, but in doing so employs only 86,000 tons of our shipping, the remaining 266,000 being carried on in American bottoms.

The trade with Canada takes off only L.2,700,000 worth of our manufactures, but in doing so gives employment to no less than 560,000 tons of our shipping, besides 560,000 tons employed in the course of trade by Canada itself.

Now, the trade to our North American colonies has tripled within the last ten years. If it goes on at the same rate in the next ten, and draws after it a similar increase of British

tonnage, the exports to those possessions in 1848 will be no less than L.8,100,000, and give employment to upwards of 1,560,000 tons of shipping; upwards of a half, in all probability, of the whole British shipping employed in our foreign trade at that period-the whole British tonnage at present employed being 2,400,000

tons.

Nothing can more clearly illustrate the vital difference between the importance of the colonial trade and that conducted with an independent foreign state. It is so great, indeed, as to appear almost miraculous, and to demonstrate, beyond the possibility of doubt, that no reliance can be placed on foreign trade with independent states, as a foundation for maritime strength, but that the empire of the seas is for ever destined to the possessor of the most extensive and powerful colonial dominions.

There is nothing peculiar in the situation of the Canadas which has given rise to this extraordinary proof of the superior efficacy of colonial trade to that of foreign independent states, both in encouraging domestic industry and forming a nursery for naval strength. At the opposite extremity of the globe, in Australia, a progress still more wonderful and gratifying has taken place, sufficient to demonstrate that if ignorance or infatuation does not make us throw away our advantages, Great Britain still possesses the means of maintaining her maritime supremacy and station among the nations of the earth.

Thus it appears that while the tonnage employed in the trade with Australia has increased in the last sixteen years from 1,291 to 19,195 tons, or about sixteen-fold, the value of the exports has increased from L.124,232 to L.835,637, or about seven-fold.

If the same proportion should continue for the next ten years, in the year 1848 the tonnage employed in the trade with Australia will be 300,000 tons; and the value of the exports to that colony between five and six millions sterling.

And if it should continue for the next twenty years, the tonnage in 1858 will be, even on the most moderate computation, 1,500,000 tons, and the value of the exports above twenty millions sterling.

Startling and extravagant as these results will probably appear to almost all our readers, they are no more than a fair application to the future of the experience of the past-the only safe and sound principle on which political, equally with physical reasoning, can be founded; and if they appear, as they really do, chimerical, it is only because the elements of national strength and greatness, involved in the progress of a great colonial empire, greatly exceed any thing which even the imagination of the most ardent speculator can venture to suggest.

And if it be said that, long before such halcyon days can arrive, Canada and Australia will have thrown off their connexion with the mother state, and declared themselves independent, the answer is obvious. By so doing, they will indeed deprive us of that great and extraordinary advantage to our maritime strength which arises from the possession of flourishing colonial

dominions; but they cannot deprive us of that dependence upon our trade and shipping which is necessarily inherent in all infant and rising states, whether colonial or independent. With such states, even after they have emancipa. ted themselves, the reciprocity system cannot fail to be advantageous to Great Britain, because their interests are necessarily wound up with the growth of agriculture and the rural manufactures; and therefore it neither can be their interest, nor will they possess the power, to attempt to rival the parent state, either in the finer manufactures or in maritime exertion. The United States of America, it has been seen, notwithstanding their great ambition for a naval force, and their having been for more than half a century independent, are not yet able to compete with Great Britain in the carrying on of their own trade, and accordingly British shipping is continually making greater advances over the American in the conduct of the commercial intercourse between the two countries. The same must be the case, in a still greater degree, with our colonies in North America and Australia, because they are behind America in the career of civilisation, and therefore must be for a longer period dependent upon the mother country both for the supply of their manufactures and the carrying on of their trade.

The details, which have now been given will explain how the reciprocity advocates have for so long a period succeeded in blinding the people of this country to the real tendency of the policy of the commercial system which has been pursued for the last fifteen years. And how it happened that, amidst the constant complaints of the ship-owners, their interests were declining and

by

almost destroyed, and their property ruined by the operation of that system, the President of the Board of Trade was always able to meet them Parliamentary Returns, which showed that the trade and shipping of the empire, taken as a whole, was, notwithstanding, on the increase. It was evidently by confounding together the exports to our colonies with the exports to the reciprocity countries, that the official advocates of the new system were so long able to mystify and delude the world. They constantly told us that our exports were increasing, and our tonnage getting larger every year, but they did not tell us, what was nevertheless the case, that the countries with whom our trade was increasing were our own colonies or distant states, with whom we have no reciprocity treaties, and that the countries with whom it was diminishing were the European nations in our neighbourhood with whom we had concluded reciprocity treaties, and to propitiate whom we have been content to sacrifice three-fourths of our shipping employed in the Baltic trade. It is by separating the great mass of our export trade and foreign tonnage into its component parts, and showing in what quarters it has increased, and in what diminished, that the real tendency of the system which we have been pursuing is brought to light; and it is distinctly made to appear that the reciprocity advocates have succeeded in bolstering up their system solely by concealing its effects upon us in the countries with whom it has been carried into execution, under the cover of the vast increase with those to whom it has not been applied, or who stand in the situation of colonies to the mother country.

And, what is not a little singular, and perhaps unparalleled in such investigations, the reciprocity advocates have succeeded with a large portion of the public in maintaining the credit of their system, and decrying the value of our colonial trade, solely in consequence of the effect of the great increase of that very colonial trade in concealing the operation of their favourite reciprocity principles.

It is a mistake to say that these results demonstrate that practical experience is at variance with principle in this particular. There is in reality no contradiction between them.

Mr

Huskisson's principles were quite well founded in the abstract, and on the supposition that the prices of different commodities were the same in all countries, and that all were to enter the field of commercial regulation with hands unfettered-with hearts unimpassioned and without any great vested interests already existing which depended on the continuance of the former system of trade. But his grand error consisted in this, that he overlooked the paramount necessity in all countries of attending to the national security and defence in preference to the national wealth. The vast difference in the cost of producing the same article in different countries, and the consequent necessity of protecting by fiscal regulations those branches of industry, if essential to the national independence, which are conducted at a disadvantage-and the absolute necessity of getting some compensation in return for a reciprocity concession, not by a reciprocity in regard to that one article, but in regard to some other article in which the disadvantage lies on the side of the country to whom the concession is made.

Nothing can be clearer than that the national defence and independence is of more importance than the mere growth of any particular branch of trade or manufacture. The considerations already urged on this subject are so obvious and important as to render it perfectly unnecessary to enlarge farther upon it. It is no doubt a very good thing to be rich, but it is also a very good thing to be independent. It is an advantage to have wealth, if we also possess the means of defending it; but if we are destitute of that security it will rather prove a curse, by alluring rival or hostile nations to encroach upon or plunder our possessions. No country in reality is in so dangerous and precarious a state as one which has a vast foreign trade and no adequate means of defence; because its wealth exposes it to violence which it has not the means of resisting.

The two grand articles in the trade of which it is of paramount importance that a maritime state should, at all hazards, maintain its superiority, are grain and shipping. The former is necessary for the subsistence of its people-the latter is an essential element in its national defence and inde

pendence. It is in vain to say that a free trade can ever, consistently with the national security, be maintained in either of these articles. If we are dependent on foreign supplies for grain, we cannot maintain even the shadow of independence; because foreign nations can at any moment, by simply closing their harbours, reduce our people to desperation, and our Government to submission. If we have not a powerful navy, we are equally liable to be subverted by having our harbours blockaded, and our foreign manufactures converted into a source of the most ruinous weakness, by being suddenly deprived of all vent for their industry. A great commercial state, therefore, that would maintain its independence, must, at all hazards, and even, if necessary, at the sacrifice of part of its wealth, preserve itself from falling into a state of dependence upon either foreign grain or foreign shipping. If it does not do so it is liable to have all its wealth at any moment wrested from it by the mere stoppage of the foreign supplies, or vent for produce on which it depended, and the resources on which it mainly relied for the subsistence of its people turned into the certain instrument of its subjugation.

In considering the application of the reciprocity system also, it seems to be equally material to keep in view the essential distinction between the price at which different commodities can be reared in different countries, and not to run away with the idea that we have got a real reciprocity for our people, or entered into a commercial treaty on equal terms with our neighbours, merely because we have agreed to admit some particular articles of manufacture on the same terms with them. Every thing depends upon the relative price at which that article can be reared in the two countries. If the article can be reared cheaper abroad than at home, it is a perfect delusion to say, that we have entered into a fair reciprocity treaty, because we admit that article on the same terms with them. Real reciprocity consists not in admitting the same article into our ports on the same terms on which our neighbours receive ours, but in obtaining admittance for a corresponding article on our side in which we have a corresponding advantage over them. Unless this is

done, reciprocity is a perfect mockery, because it is all on our side. For example, France produces abundance of wine in admirable quality, and England produces iron and cotton goods in similar quantity and quality. Real reciprocity would consist in a commercial treaty, whereby, in consideration of the wines of France being admitted into England at a low duty, the iron and cotton goods of England should be admitted at a low duty into France. There would be no reciprocity in France saying to England, we will admit your wines on the same terms of which you admit ours; or in England saying to France, we will admit your cotton goods on the same terms on which you admit ours. The simple answer to such a proposal would be, that the cotton manufactures of France would be ruined by the superior capital and skill of those of England, and that the sour wines of England would be immediately extinguished by the claret and Champagne of France. In like manner, there would be no reciprocity in Poland or Prussia proclaiming a free trade in corn, or an interchange of equal duties with England; because that is an article in which we never can compete with them, from the weight of the national debt and the higher price of labour in this country; or in England proclaiming a free trade in cotton goods with Prussia, because that is an article in which they never can compete with us, from our extraordinary manufacturing advantages. But there would be a very real reciprocity in a treaty of this description:- We will take your grain at a moderate duty, provided you take our cottons at as moderate a duty. In support of such a treaty, we might say with justice"Nature has given you the power of raising grain at two-thirds of the price at which we can do it, in consequence of the superior cheapness of your labour and abundance of your harvests, and she has given us the means of producing cotton goods and cutlery at two-thirds of the price that you can, in consequence of the superior richness of our coal mines and excellence of our machinery. Let us then conclude a commercial treaty founded on a just appreciation of our relative situations. Do you consent to encourage our manufactures, and we will consent to encourage your farmers;

and let us mutually admit the goods in which nature has given a superiority to the one and the other, on the same terms." Such a proposal might be dangerous to national independence or to the home trade, by depressing our agricultural interest, but it would at least be a fair reciprocity, and unobjectionable on the footing of commercial dealing. But it would obviously be a perfect mockery at equality for England to say to Prussia, "We are dealing with you on the footing of reciprocity, because we admit your cotton goods on the same terms on which you admit ours ;" or for Poland to say to England, "We are dealing with Great Britain on the footing of reciprocity, because we admit English grain into our harbours on the same terms on which they admit Polish." It is quite evident that in both these cases the country admitting and acting on such false principles would gratuitously inflict a serious evil upon itself, without any equivalent whatever, and that, running away with the name of reciprocity without the reality, it would in a very short time, without any return whatever, consign a valuable portion of its industry to destruction.

ours. No person can doubt that although such a system might have been hurtful to our maritime interests, and dangerous to our national superiority, yet it would, with reference merely to national wealth, be a fair reciprocity treaty, and would in the end communicate upon the whole an equal and reciprocal benefit to the staple and natural branches of industry of both countries. But, instead of this, what have we done under the reciprocity system? We contented ourselves with issuing a proclamation, in which we said that we would admit Prussian, Danish, and Swedish ship. ping into our harbours on the same terms on which they received ours. We never thought of making a stipulation in return for the boon thus conferred on their shipping, in which they had the natural advantage over us, that they should concede to us a similar boon for iron and cotton goods, where we had a natural advantage over them. That would have been real reciprocity, but we contented ourselves with nominal reciprocity, which was on our own side only. The consequence has been, that the Baltic shipowners gained the incalculable advantage of obtaining a competition on equal terms with the British shipping interest in the carrying on the intercourse between the Baltic shores and the British harbours, and sweeping off to themselves three-fourths of that valuable traffic, while the British manufacturers were not enabled in return to sell one pound worth more of their articles in the Baltic ports than before.

Now this is just what we have done by deluding ourselves with the name of reciprocity without the reality in our maritime intercourse with foreign powers. Every one knows that the Baltic powers can carry on ship-building far cheaper than England, for this plain reason, that the materials of ships-timber, cordage, hemp and tarare produced by nature on the shores of the Baltic, in countries where labour is not half so dear as in the British isles. On the other hand, cotton goods and iron of all sorts can be manufactured far cheaper in Great Britain than either in France or the Baltic states, in consequence of the accumulation of capital and great skill in machinery in this country, and the incalculable advantage of our coal mines. Real reciprocity, then, would have consisted in a treaty, whereby, in consideration of our admitting their shipping into our harbours on as favourable terms as they admitted ours into theirs, they consented to receive our cotton goods into their ports on the same terms as we received their cotton fabrics into

But this is not all. Not content with giving us no commercial advantage whatever, in return for this huge boon to their shipping interest, the continental nations have done just the reverse; and Prussia, in particular, to propitiate whom the navigation lawsthat is, the nursery for our seamenwere sacrificed, has, in return, organized the celebrated Prussian commercial league, by which more than the half of Germany has been arrayed in decided hostility to our manufacturing industry. We have repeatedly, in this Miscellany, drawn the attention of our readers to the importance of the subject of this Prussian commercial league; and it is sufficient to observe at present, that, by this celebra