Thus, under the reciprocity system with that country, the trade has increased between 1822 and 1836, from 138 ships to 226; while the American has increased only from 500 to 542. And the British tonnage swelled from 37,385 to 86,383, while the American tonnage has increased only from 156,054 to 226,483.

This result, however, so far from being a proof that the reciprocity system, in its application to the trade of Great Britain with the old states of the world, is founded on just principles, demonstrates diametrically the reverse. The reciprocity system has proved of advantage to the British shipping in the intercourse with America, because labour and all the articles employed in the building of ships are so much dearer in America than in Great Britain that the British shipowners can carry on the trade at a cheaper rate than the American, and, therefore, under an equal system of duties, the British shipping has gained the advantage. There cannot be a doubt of the expediency of that system in its application to countries where ship-building and navigation are more expensive than they are in this, and, therefore, Mr

Huskisson acted perfectly wisely in concluding a treaty with America on such terms. But the real point of doubt is, not whether such a system is expedient with countries where shipbuilding is dearer, but whether it is expedient with countries where ship. building is cheaper than in Great Britain. And, with reference to that point, it is clear that the fact that the reciprocity system has worked to the prejudice of America, which builds ships dearer than England, is founded exactly upon the same principle in proving that it is prejudicial to England, in her intercourse with the Baltic powers, where it is cheaper.

The following table demonstrates that in sixteen years, from 1820 to 1836, the reciprocity system has proved highly prejudicial to British shipping, and highly advantageous to foreign, in conducting the British commerce; and that if the same system is continued for sixteen years longer, it will, in spite of all the prodigious increase in the British trade with their colonial possessions, render the foreign shipping superior to the British even in conducting our own trade.

Thus it appears that while in 1820 the British tonnage employed in carrying on the British trade was four times the foreign, in 1836 it bore to it only the proportion of 70 to 30, or about 23 to 1.

But then, say the advocates for the reciprocity system, although the British maritime interests undoubtedly have suffered from such a system, yet the British commerce has been revived and resuscitated by that change, and what has been gained by our manufacturers and merchants in that respect is much more than what has been lost by our ship-builders.

Even if the fact were as is now stated, we should demur, in the strongest terms, to the expedience of sacrificing, in any degree whatever, our maritime to our manufacturing interests. What renders the shipping interest of such incalculable importance to a commercial state is not merely that it constitutes the sinews and basis of its naval strength and national independence, but constitutes the sole bulwark for the protection even of the commercial and manufacturing interests, which are so unhappily sometimes considered as of superior importance. Admitting that as long as universal peace prevails foreign commerce can be easily carried on by a maritime state which has lost its naval superiority, and is compelled to trust in great part to foreign shipping for production of its commercial intercourse, what is to become of the trade of such a state when, in its own defence, it is forced into a serious war, and it is threatened with blockade in its own harbours by the combined forces of foreign maritime powers? What the better would Great Britain be of all its foreign trade carried on in foreign vessels if, in consequence of the magnitude of the navy which had thus been reared up in foreign states, it found itself blockaded in its own harbours, and foreign fleets of war lying across the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde? The very magnitude of its foreign commerce would, when such a catastrophe occurred, prove the most serious of all embarrassments, because it would have reared up many millions of useless mouths, whose sufferings and turbulence, upon the destruction of their only means of subsistence, would render all attempts at prolonging resistance utterly hopeless.

In a word, the magnitude of a commercial nation's foreign commerce, and the multitude of its manufactures, so far from being an element of strength, is, in fact, nothing but a source of weakness, if unaccompanied by a proportional naval power. It is liable, by a single reverse at sea, to be blockaded in its harbours, and to lose in a few weeks the fruits of centuries of conquest. The condition of a great insular and commercial state, which has come to depend in great part upon foreign shipping for the conduct of its commerce, is precisely similar to that of a fortified town, which abounds with inhabitants and unwarlike mouths, which has little to rely upon but foreign mercenaries for the defence of its ramparts, and the recall of whom by the powers to whom they belong would necessarily leave it entirely defenceless. The blockade and capture of Athens by Lysander, after the fatal defeat of Egos Potamos, proves on how unstable a basis the safety of every commercial state is founded where the dominion of the seas does not rest upon a great and indestructible naval power.

But let us come a little closer to the point, and examine whether the assertion of the great extension of our foreign commerce by means of the reciprocity system, and with the countries with whom reciprocity treaties have been concluded, is in reality well founded.

Keeping in view that the reciprocity treaties hitherto concluded have been with Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, America, Brazil, and Columbia, we refer to the table exhibiting the progress of the exports to these countries from 1827 to 1836.

This table is in the highest degree instructive. From it it appears that the export trade to Prussia, for the increase of which Mr Huskisson, in 1823, was content to repeal the navigation laws of England, the bulwark of our national strength, has declined, in ten years before 1836, from L.174,000 to L.160,000; that with Denmark has declined from L.104,000 to L.91,000; while that of Germany has remained perfectly stationary through the whole period. The trade with France is the only one which has evidently increased, but that is the result entirely of the equalization of the duties on wine; and accordingly tha

of Portugal has fallen off in nearly a similar proportion; while the trade with the United States of America, under the reciprocity system, has, upon the whole, remained nearly stationary, or rather declined. The great exports of 1835 and 1836 to that country were entirely fictitious, and the result of the joint-stock mania there, during these years, which led to the terrible commercial crisis of 1837, when the exports of Great Britain to the United States sunk to L.3,500,000.

But what is still more curious, it appears from another table that the trade with the countries with whom we have concluded no reciprocity treaties, but with whom we still deal on the old restrictive system, and that with our own colonies, which is entirely and rigidly confined to ourselves, has increased much faster than that with the reciprocity countries; and that in truth it is the vast increase of our trade with those countries, who are out of the reciprocity pale, which has compensated all the evils arising even to commerce itself, from the adoption of that system with the other states. From this table it is manifest that our trade with distant quarters of the world with whom we have no reciprocity treaties, such as Spain, Italy, Turkey; and our own colonies, as Australia, the Canadas, the East Indies, &c., has doubled, and in some instances tripled, during the very years that our trade with the countries with whom we had concluded reciprocity treaties was stationary or had declined, affording thus a striking contrast to the miserable and languid state of our trade with the Baltic powers, to preserve or increase which we sacrificed the old and powerful bulwark of our navigation laws.

From the Parliamentary returns it appears also that our trade both with northern and southern Europe has declined under the influence of the reciprocity system; and is considerably less in the five years preceding 1836 than it was in the five years preceding 1819. So clear is this decrease in our foreign trade to Europe, during the working of the reciprocity system, that Mr Porter, although a strenuous advocate for its principles, makes the

following candid admission as to the falling off of our foreign trade, from the commencement of the present century, down to this time, with the exception of the two years of inordinate commercial activity of 1835 and 1836.

"If the following table is taken in this way, as the test of the progress of our foreign trade, during the present century, it will be seen that little or none has been made-that, in fact, if we except the last two years (1835 and 1836), the amount of our foreign trade has not been equal to that which was carried on during some of the years when we were at war with nearly all Europe, nor to that of the first five years of peace that followed. The average annual exports of British produce and manufactures in the decennary period from 1801 to 1810 amounted to L.40,737,970. In the next ten years, from 1811 to 1820, the annual average was L.41,454,461; from 1821 to 1830 the annual average fell to L.36,597,623. Since that time the amount has been progressively advancing, and, in 1836, exceeded by L.1,765,543 the amount in 1815, the first year of the peace, which, with the exception of 1836, was the greatest year of export trade, judging from the value of the shipments, that this country has ever seen.'

"That part of our commerce which, being carried on with the rich and civilized inhabitants of European nations, should present the greatest field for extension, will be seen to have fallen off under this aspect in a remarkable degree. The average annual exports to the whole of Europe were less in value by nearly twenty per cent in the five years from 1832 to 1836, than they were in the five years that followed the close of the war, and it affords strong evidence of the unsatisfactory footing upon which our trading regulations with Europe are established; that our exports to the United States of America, which, with their population of only twelve millions, are removed to a distance from us of 3000 miles across the Atlantic, have amounted to more than one-half of the value of our shipments to the whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as great as that of the

United States of America, and with an abundance of productions suited to our wants which they are naturally desirous of exchanging for the products of our mines and looms.".

Thus it distinctly appears, both from the Parliamentary returns and the admissions of the most able and well informed advocates for the reciprocity system, that the anticipated and promised extension of our foreign trade, from the adoption of that system, has not taken place; that so far from it, our trade has rapidly and signally declined, during the last fiveand-twenty years, with the old states of Europe, fifteen of which have been spent under the reciprocity system; and, therefore, that we have gratuitously inflicted a severe wound upon our own maritime interests, without having purchased thereby any equivalent advantage, either for our foreign trade or our home manufactures.

Nevertheless, it is certain that our foreign trade and intercourse with all the world has upon the whole increased, and in many quarters most rapidly, during the last twenty years.

Where, then, it may be asked, have the British merchants found a compensation, as they unquestionably must

have done, for the decline of their trade with the old state of Europe? The answer to this is to be found in the prodigious simultaneous increase of our colonial trade. It is there that the real strength of Great Britain is to be found. It is there that an antidote has been silently prepared for all the errors of our modern commercial policy; and it is by confounding the growth of our distant colonies, and the immense trade which has sprung up from their influence, with the effects of the Reciprocity System in our intercourse with the European states, that its advocates have been able to conceal from the world the real tendency of their system. The number of ships built for the United Kingdom and its possessions in Europe, is just about the same as it was twenty-five years ago, while that for the trade to the colonies has, during the same period, nearly quadrupled.

An examination of the quarters of the world in which our trade has increased, demonstrates clearly that it is in our intercourse with our own colonies that the compensation for the decline of our trade with Europe itself has been found.

With the British colonies in

America, has increased from

With the United States of Ame

rica, has increased from

And that with India has increased from

It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the reciprocity system has had no tendency to check the serious decay which is going forward in our European trade, while the restrictive system, which is still applied with undiminished force to our colonies, at least in their intercourse with the parent state, has had as little effect in checking the rapid and astonishing growth, both of our shipping and foreign trade, with those distant parts of the empire. Nothing but the most obstinate adherence to theory, and the most perverse blindness to facts, can enable any person to resist the conclusion

that it is in our intercourse with our colonies that the real sinews of British strength are to be found; that the reciprocity system is wholly unable to preserve our European trade from decay, while it is utterly ruinous to our shipping interests employed in commerce with these countries; and therefore that our true interest is to be found in cultivating, with the most assiduous care, our colonial dependencies, in our intercourse with whom we employ only our own shipping, and in our commercial intercourse with which we experience the benefit of a trade sharing in the rapid extension and