The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-24 00:00:00

J3llll

LONDON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1845.

We have been so often under great obligations to
Mr. HUME for his useful and persevering labours in
bringing within the knowledge, and within the reach
of the public at large, the most important documents
and returns that can illustrate the domestic, financial,
and foreign administration of the affairs of this
n‘ pre-
sentColo-
nies,, em-
pire, that we are less surprised than gratified by the
recentsespsrioomn—ulgotniosne
of
ff
Canpnanpeorno, entitled , (No.
e 49,t lof the
Population, Trade, Sco.” which is docketed with
the Honourable Member's name. It is impossible to
peruse this return without very strong convictions of
the immense responsibilities that attach to the ex-
tended influence, authority, commerce, and health
that are derived to the mother country through its
colonial dominions. The return, to which we now
'allude, sets forth in terms of the order of the House,
" the date at which each colony or foreign possession
of the British Crown was captured, ceded, or settled,
the number of population, and whether having legis-
lative assemblies, or governed by orders of the Queen
in Council ; stating, also, value of exports and
imports, number and tonnage of vessels entered in-
wards and cleared outwards in each colony, in the
year 1842." If " DAVID " HUME could have ar-
rived, by, any process of anticipation, at the ,
interesting results which, about a century
after his time, were to be promulgated to
the world in :his paper, through the instrumentality
of his namesake, the great historian's generous, though
unsuccessful apology for the STUART Sovereigns
would have derived no inconsiderable aid and force
from a recapitulation of some of these dates of colo-
nial settlements. This remark derives additional
importance, perhaps, from the fact that a sufficient de-
gree of credit has never been conceded to the successor
of ELIZABETH for the sagacity and forecast with
which he examined, discussed, and even projected
great iichemes of trans-atlantic colonization. His
ideas on this national question were in some respects,
it would be easy to show, far beyond the lights which
most of his -contemporaries, whether princes or
subjects, had 'yet acquired. On matters of this
kind, moreover, JAMES was inspired with a
constancy of purpose, and a courage in en-
countering discouragements and difficulties that
strongly contrasted with the general irresolution,
timidity, and feebleness of his character. Almost the
lust hours of his life—or certainly the last days of his
existence—were devoted, in the privacy of his closet at
Theobalds, to the implement of his grand design
for the settlement of Nova Scotia, which had re-
mained from 1479 until the royal grant to the
ALEXANDERS, in 1622, an unproductive, because un-
improved, discovery. Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua,
and the Bahamas, were all settled during the reign of
Ts eonrttaotliave
aonfdeßtohAlatWEort,hiell lA6nsgsu.
in the West
illaTsi,ie settlement of
CHARLES I. Jamaica capitulated to the heroic repre-
Indies, in 1666, and the cession of St. Helena by the
Dutch, in 1673, are among the few redeeming illus-
trations of the reign of CHARLES IL
It appears that the total population of our colonies
in North America—namely, the two Canadas, New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Ed-
ward's Island, and Newfoundland, amounts to
1,621,000 souls: the imports from these colonies into