The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-10 00:00:00

GRATIS]

only obtain from the mother country the immense amount of
manufactured produce which their growing wealth and num-
bers must require. So strongly, gentlemen, am I impressed
with these principles—so clearly do I see the future path
traced out to England, not less by her duty than her inter-
ests, that there is no one circumstance in her present condi-
tion, not even those which are most justly considered as preg-
nant with danger and alarm, that they may not be converted
into the source of blessings, if a decided and manly course is
taken by the nation and its Government in regard to its co-
lonial interests. Indeed, so clearly does this appear that one
is almost tempted to believe that the manifold political and
social evils of our present condition, are the scourges in-
tended by Providence to bring us back, by necessity and a
sense of our own interests, to those great national duties from
which we have so long and so unaccountably swerged. Are
we oppressed with a numerous and redundant population ?
Are we justly apprehensive that a mass of human beings, al-
ready consisting of five-and4wenty millions, and multiplying
at the rate of a thousand souls a-day, will ere long be unable
to find subsistence within the narrow space of these islands ?
Let us turn to the Colonies, and there we shall find. bound-
less regions, capable of maintaining ten times our present
population in contentment and affluence, and which require
only the surplus arms and mouths of the parent state, to be
converted into gigantic empires, which, before a century has
elapsed, may overshadow the greatness-even of European re-
nown. Are we justly fearful that the increasing manufac-
turing skill and growing commercial jealousy of the Conti-
tental states may gradually shut us out from the European
market, and that our millions of manufacturers may find their
sources of foreign subsistence fail at a time when all home
employments are filled up ?, Let us turn to the Colonies,
and there we shall see empires of gigantic strength rapidly
rising to maturity, in which manufacturing establishments
cannot for centuries take root, and in which the taste for
British manufactures, and the habits of British comfort, are
indelibly implantedon the British race. Are we overburdened
with the weight of our; poor-rates and the multitude of our
paupers, and • trembling under the effect of the deep-rooted
discontent produced in the attempt to withdraw public sup-
port from the maintenance of the adult and healthy labourer?
Let us find the means of transporting these healthy workmen
to our colonial settlements, and we shall confer as great a
blessing upon them as we shall give a relief to the parent
state. Are we disquieted by the rapid progress of corruption
in our great towns; and alarmed at the enormous mass of fe-
male profligacy which, like a gangrene, infests these great
marts of pleasure and opulence ? Let us look to the Colo-
nies, and there we shall find states in which the population is
advancing with incredible rapidity, but in which the greatest
existing evil is, the undue and frightful preponderance of the
male sex ; and that all that is wanting to complete their means
of increase is, that the proportion should be righted-by the
transfer to distant shores of part of the female population
which now encumbers the British isles. Are the means to
transport these numerous and indigent classes to these distant
regions awanting, and has individual emigration hitherto been
liable to the reproach that it removes the better class of our
citizens who could do for themselves, and leaves the poorest
who encumber the land ? The British navy lies between, and
means exist of transporting, at hardly any expense to the pa-
rent state, all that can ever be required of our working popue
lotion from that part of the empire which they overburden,
to that to which they will prove a blessing. Gentlemen, I
agree with my eloquent and esteemed friend, Dr. M`Leod,
that it is astonishing the attention of Government has not ere
this been turned to this subject. And why, I would ask, may
not part, at least, of the British navy be constantly employed
in transporting emigrants of all classes to our Colonial, pos-
sessions ? Why should two hundred vessels of different sizes,
that are now in commission in the British navy, be employed
only in useless parades, when hundreds of thousands on the
British-shores are pining for the means of transport across
the seas, and millions of acres on the other side of the ocean,
teeming with verdant fertility, await only their robust hands
to be converted into a terrestrial paradise ? Why should the
British navy not be employed, like the Roman legions in time
of peace, in works of public utility ? and why should their ef-
forts not construct causeways across the deep, which would
bind together the immense circuit of the British Colonial
dominions, as strongly as the highways constrocted by the
legions cemented the fabric of their mighty empire ? in this
view the last inconvenience attending a redundant pauper
poptilation—that of being with difficulty removed, would ue
converted into an clement of national strength, because it
would induce all classes cheerfully to acquiesce in the dupli-
cation of our naval force, from which they all derive such
obvious advantages; the navy would augment in size and
grow in usefulness under such a salutary system ; and the
very quality which Adam Smith long ago remarked as the
greatest obstable to the improvement of the human race, that
of being the lumber which it is of all others the most difficult
to transport, would become the means of augmenting the
. maritime force of England, and strengthening the, unseen
chain which holds together the far distant provinces of its
mighty dominion."
We cannot help thinking that the suggestion here ma- c,-of
directing a part at least of the British navy to the removal of
such part of our population as desire it, to our colonial pos-
sessions, is well worthy of the most serious consideration. It
must be evident to every one Who considers the extraordinary
reduction which has taken place in our naval force during the
last thirty years. and which has brought it down from two
hundred and forty ships of the line to eighty, that we have
fallen now into an economical and commercial generation;
and that the rulers of the state, -and the democratic constituo
encies who direct the rulers, are entirely governed by that
passion, for present econo:ny, and that disregard of future ob-
jects, which is the invariable characteristic of the masses of
mankind. No surprise-need be excitellat a democratic com-
munity being influenced by such want of foresight, when all
the eloquence of Demosthenes was unable to persuade the
most enlightened of the states of antiquity to take any steps
to ward off the danger arising from the invasion of Philip of
Macedon ; and all the wisdom of Washington, was unable to
communicate to the greatest republic of modern times, suffi-
cient strength or foresight to prevent its capital being taken,
and its arsenals pillaged, by a British division not four thou-
sand strong. It is of the last importance, therefore, to dis-
cover some method by which the increase of the navy,
evidently essential to our national independence, and to
avert the horrors of the actual blockade of our harbours,
may be rendered popular with the masses of the people.
That these masses would make the most strenuous exer-
tions to support the independence of-the British- flag, if a
war actually broke out, may be considered as certain ; but
will they be equally ready to make those efforts during peace,
and when the danger is as yet distant, which are requisite
both to insure its success and shorten its duration ? Expe-
rience proves that they will not • for; though menaced by
maritime dangers of every kind, they have, in the last five-
and-twenty years, let the royal navy sink down one-third of
what it was during the war, and one-half what it was before
its commencement. The only mode, therefore, that is ap-
parently- practicable of bringing up the royal navy to a level
at all commensurate either with the strength of the state or
the dangers with which it is threatened, is by giVing the
masses some present and personal object of advantage, which
is to be gained by the expense requisite for its increase. Now,
no object would be so generally popular, or universally felt
to be important, as that which furnished the means of gra-
tuitous emigration to a large proportion of our surplus work-
ing population. Every class in the country, every part of
the empire, would at once feel the benefit of such 'an arrange-
ment :—the poor, by. the safe and .easy means of emigration
that would be afforded them to countries where their condi-
tion would at once become prosperous ; the landholders, in
the diminution of the number of paupers and the burden of
poor-rates, which would be occasioneds the manufacturers,
in the vast increase in the colonial market for their produce
which would be opened up ; the colonies, in the boundless
supply of robust and efficient • labourers with which they
would be furnished. The increase in the population, now so
much the object of concern to the mother country, would
cease to be regarded with any disquietude ; it would be con-
sidered only as the harbinger of the increased growth of our
colonial possessions, and an increased vent for our produce
for our colonial wants. The British navy would really be-
come the chain which holds together the far distant parts of
its immense dominion ; the means of uniting them in peace
—the force to protect them in war ; and the prosperity and
extension of the far and distant parts of the empire, acting
and readting• upon each other, would tend only to augment
their mutual and highly beneficial dependence on each other,
and to increase the strength of the naval force which was to
protect alike all parts of the empire.
The British commercial policy, ever since the reciprocity
system began, may be characterised in two words—" Colonial
Neglect and European Propitiation." As this system has
now been in operation for sixteen years, ample time has been
afforded to demonstrate, by experience, its effects, whether
for good or for evil. The following statement of the effect of
this system, which commenced in 1823, was made by Mr.
Alison at the Glasgow dinner above referred to :
" Standing as 1 do in the midst of this great commercial
city, second to none, after the metropolis, in the British em-
pire, I nee&not say that we are people mainly dependent on
commerce and maritime strength ; and we have only to look
around us, and contemplate the narrow extent of these
islands, compared with the vast population already crowded
within their shores, to feel convinced that any serious and
permanent obstruction to our foreign commerce, or decline
in our maritime power, would not only be attended with the
greatest danger to our independence, but fraught with a de-
gree of wide-spread misery, perhaps unparallelled even in the
long annals of human suffering. But, gentlemen, when we
minutely examine our maritime and commercial situation,
we shall fled many causes for serious alarm, and many rea-
sons for concluding that our policy in these respects has hi-
therto been mainly directed to fruitless or unattainable ob-
jects ; and that, in their prosecution, we have overlooked or
neglected the certain elements of strength lying in our own
bosom, in the growth of our colonial empire. If we look to
our exports and tonnage returns, we shall see that our mari-
time resources for the last forty years have been far from
keeping pace with our commercial growth, and that our ex-
ports to the-countries whom we have made the greatest sacri-
fices to propitiate, have been constantly and rapidly declining,
while those to our colonies, for whose interests we have done
so little, have been as constantly and rapidly increasing ; and
that it is the growth of the latter which has concealed and
counterbalanced the decay of the former. Let us look at our
total exports, imports, and tonnage in the present time, as
compared with what they were during the peace of Amiens.
They stood as follows :
Exports. Imports. Tonnage.
1802, £38,309,980 £29,826,210 £2,167,000
1838, - 105,170,549 61,268,320 2,89,601
" Thus, gentlemen, you see, that while from 1802 to 1838,
that is in six.omd-thirty years, our exports have advanced
from 38 to 105, that is aborit 239- per cent., and our imports
from 29 to 61, that is about 210 per cent., our whole tonnage
has only increased froM 21 to 28, that is about 33 per cent.
This broad and decisive fact is calculated to excite the most
serious alarm in every rational bosomOas to the maintenance
in future of the maritime superiority of Great Britain. For
who has carried the remainder of our merchandise abroad,
and wafted the remainder .of our imports to our shores ?
SOinebody must have done it. The conclusion is unavoida
able that it was done hi great part by/ore-igen states, that is,
by vessels and seamen that may any day be ranged against us
by our enemies. And, gentlemen, the number of those fo-
reign seamen and vessels now employed in the British trade,
and the rapid encroachments they are making on British ma-
ritime strength, is decisively proved by the Parliamentary.
Tables collected with so much care and accuracy by Mr.
Porter, at the Board of Trade : from them it appears that the
relative proportions of Foreign and British shipping employed
in conducting our trade at these two periods were follows
British.
Vessels.
11,285
16,119
Foreign.
Vessels. Tons.
1832 3472 447,611 .
1838 8679 1,211,066
" Thus, while the British tonnage in the last thirty-six
years has advanced from sixteen to twenty-seven, the foreign
employed in conducting our trade have advanced from 44 to
121, that is, nearly tripled. This, gentlemen; is the general

1802..
1838

Tons.
1,668,060
2 785 387
, ,