The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-02-06 00:00:00

THE WORLD

" I will not trouble the house with many statistical
details, and will rather give the conclusions of the statis-
tical inquiries which I have made. There is no mystery
about any statistics which I may produce. They are
drawn from the official returns in the library up stairs, and
have an advantage beyond being comprehensive and accu-
rate. I will show the state of our colonial trade, and its
effect on that very industry which is the great advocate in
this country for sacrificing that colonial trade—l mean the
industry of Lancashire. The only branch of trade to
which I shall refer is the most important, and it is that
trade towards which we are told all our legislation ought
to bear. No statistics will, lam sure, surprise gentlemen
in this house more than those which relate to this matter.
The exports of calicoes, plain and printed, for the last 16
years—viz., from 1831 to 1846, both to British and foreign
possessions; are :—to all foreign parts, 5,913,506,603
yards ; to British colonies, 3,269,754,578 yards ; so that
the colonies have taken 313,000,277 yards more than half
of the exports to the rest of the world. (Hear, hear.)
In the same period Canada has taken 261,291,482 yards,
and the British West Indies 418,991,491 yards, while the
United States take 514,889,624 yards, so that the Ame-
rican colonies take 165,000,000 more than the whole of

the United States. (Hear," hear.) In the same period
the British West Indies have taken more than the foreign
West Indies by the amount of 86,475-,524 yards ; while
India and China, as compared with the Brazils, have
exceeded the latter by 903,410,444 yards. (Hear, hear.)
I know it will be said that
.I have taken the large period
of 16 years, when the colonies were protected, and there-
fore the trade with them much stimulated, and that I
ought to take the present exports. Well, I have divided
the 16 years into two portions of eight years each, and I
find that in the last eight years compared wi:h the first
eight there has been an increase of British colonial over
foreign of 738,000 yards. The increase to British North
America has been 69,341,000- yards. The increase to the
British colonies compared with the whole of foreign Ame-
rica is as follows c—increase to the colonies, 1,430,000
yards ; foreign America, 310,000 yards ; greater increase
to the colonies, 1,120,000 yards. During the last eight
years the increase over the first eight years to the British
possessions is 566,131,078 yards. The decrease to the
United States in the last eight years is 105,932,279 yards.
(Hear, hear.) In the total exports of cotton manufactures
to all parts there has been in 1847-48 a decrease as com-
pared with 1844-45 of 174,633,675 yards ; the decrease in
the British possessions has been 232,569,836 yards ; the
increase to foreign parts is 57,940,151 yards. (Hear.)
As to sugar-growing countries, the total decrease to Bri-
tish•sugar-growing colonies is 143,779,144 yards ; while
the increase toforeign sugar-growing countries is 13,792,885
yards. (Hear, hear.) These are instructive data, taken
from official documents, and this is the result of your new
commercial system. These documents are drawn up by
your own officers, sometimes doctored by your own officers,
and yet, in the face of this, you are calling upon the House
of Commons to express the opinion that we are enjoyin
a wholesale and satisfactory revival of trade. (Hear, hear.
THE MINISTRY S TRUCKLING TO THE NEW AGITATION
OF THE LEAGUERS AND FINANCIAL REFORMERS.
" I am told that England must be contented with a less
demonstration of brute force, lam not prepared to con-
tradict that doctrine : but I should like to have a clear
definition of what brute force is. In my opinion, a highly
disciplined army employed in a great performance—that
of the defence of the country, the maintenance of order,
the vindicating of a nation's honour, or the consolidation
of national wealth and greatness—that a body of men
thus disciplined, influenced, and led by some of the most
eminent generals, by an Alexander, a Caesar, or our own
Wellesley, is one in which moral force is as much entered
into as physical. (Cheers.) But if, for instance, I find a
man possessing a certain facility of speech. happily
adapted to his cause, addressing a great b?dy of his fellow-
men in inflammatory appeals to their passions, and stirring
them up against the institutions of the country, that is
what I call brute force—(loud cheering from the Protec-
tionists)—which I think this country would be very well
content to do without, and which, if there be any sense
9r Via' left iA men, Qr any men of heart and right feeling