The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-22 00:00:00

THE UNITED EIIVGDO3I IN 1860.

The annual Statistical Abstract for the United
Kingdom, prepared by the Board of Trade, and
published by the Queen's printers, appears this year
in the convenient form of a thin octavo volume.
These annual summaries extend from 1841 to the
present time, but 1860 is the most remarkable year
in the series. We bought and sold and manufac-
tured to an extent unknown before. But then there
was a larger population to do it. The population
of England and Wales in 1860 was estimated at
20,000,000, and that of Scotland at above 3,000,000.
The births in the year exceeded the deaths by
298,579, and our prospects are good, for the unpre-
cedented number of 381,436 persons married. There
are means of completing the statement by including
Ireland, but, even if its population should prove to
be only 6,000,000, it is probable that the births in
the United Kingdom altogether exceeded the deaths
by 1,000 a day. Emigration took from our shores
128,469 persons in the year, but a large deduction
must be made from this for the immigration of the
year, of which, however, there is no record. The
number of paupers in receipt of relief cannot be
given for any one date ; in England it was 890,423 at
the close of the year, and in Ireland 50,683 ; in Scot-
land, on the 14th of May, 77,306—altogether rather
more than 1,000,000 out of our population of
29,000,000 or 30,000,000. We were not a pau-
perised people, or we should not have raised as we
did a net revenue of £67,458,093, the largest sum
that ever found its way from the pockets of the
taxpayers into the Exchequer since the close of the
great European war, with the single exception of
the year 1858 (the rimean war). Comparing 1860
with seven years ago, we have added £30,000,000
to the Nationalpebt,raised our expenditure for the
forces from £16,000,000 to £30,000,000, and our
civil expenditure from £7,000,000 to above
£10,000,000. As for the mode in which the taxa-
tion was raised at the two periods we levied nearly
£4,000,000 more by Customs and Excise duties last
year, but £8,000,000 more from income-tax and
stamps and taxes ; making a considerable differ-
ence in the incidence of taxation, because, though
the working classes and humbler classes generally
pay about two-fifths of the Customs and Excise
duties, the upper and middle classes pay the bulk
of the direct taxation. But all classes were able to
pay more in 1860 than in 1853, though that was a
year of extraordinary prosperity. The declared
value of the British and Irish produce and manu-
factures exported was £98,933,781 in 1853 ; in
1860 it was £135,842,817. The exports to foreign
countries rose from £65,601,057 in the former year
to £92,170,560 in the latter ; to British possessions
from £33,332,724 to £43,672,257. The progress in
the cotton trade has far exceeded all others. In 1853
we sent out, to clothe the world, 1,584,727,1061 b. of
cotton manufactures ; in 1860, 2,765,337,1181 b. ; the
declared value of these exports increased from
£25,817,249 to £42,141,505. The tonnage of vessels
entered and cleared, with cargoes and in ballast at
ports of the United Kingdom was, in 1853, British,
10,268,323; foreign, 8,121,887 ; in 1860, British,
13,914,923 ; foreign, 10,774,369. 1,016 vessels,
of 211,968 tons, were built and registered in the
United Kingdom in 1860, and the total number of
vessels of the United Kingdom employed in the
home and foreign trade (exclusive of river steamers)
rose from 18,206, of 3,730,087 tons, in 1853, to
20,019, of 4,251,739, in 1860. These vessels employ
171,592 men. Ships brought us from abroad in
1860 no less than 5,880,958 qrs. of wheat and
5,086,220 cwt. of wheaten flour; the quantity of
British wheat sold in the principal market towns
in England was smaller than for years-4,623,257
qrs. ; but, owing to the price having been low in
the early part of the year, the average Gazette
price of wheat in 1860 was only 535. 3d. The com-
puted real value of our import of corn and flour of
all kinds was £31,671,918, in 1859 only £18,042,063.
The computed real value of our imports was not
ascertained until 1854; in that year it was
£152,389,053 ; in 1860 it was £210,648,643.