The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-03 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORAING, MARCH 3, 1846.

One of the most momentous considerations aris-
ing out of the present measures of Government is
that to which the lion. and gallant Member for
Liverpool—Sir Howard Douglas—so ably addressed
himself during the late debate; viz., their bearing
upon our colonial system. It would be idle to as-
sume that either Sir Robert Peel or any of his Con-
servative supporters has learnt, during the process
of their recent conversion to ultra-free trade prin-
ciples, to undervalue the importance to this empire
of her extensive colonial possessions, We doubt,
indeed, if more than half-a-dozen men are to be
found in Parliament entertaining the opinions of
Mr. Joseph Flume upon the subject. It is worth
while, then, to entertain seriously the inquiry
whether, in our selfish eagerness to grasp at sup-
posed commercial advantages and cheapness, we
are not throwing away a predominating amount of
'those which we already possess, and periling the
great source of our supremacy of wealth and power
in the scale of nations.
In the first place, let us see what is the basis of
that system of colonisation to which Great Britain
owes so much of her commercial and territorial
greatness. We have had at home, established for
ages, a great scheme of protection to the national
industry and enterprise against foreign competition ;
and as we have drafted off our population from time
to time to colonize the acquisitions of our arms, or
of discovery, in various quarters of the globe, the
contract, actual or implied, with which we have
bound these germs of nations to the mother coun-
try has been that, in the first place, their industry
and their liberty should he protected by the arm of
British power, and further, that towards their pro-
ductions our protective system should be relaxed,
and, as the reward of their allegiance, and in con-
sideration of their kindred blood, they should
enjciy a preference in our markets over those of the
foreigner. At the same time we have stipulated
that our own manufactured goods shall be received by
theta upon similar favourable. terms. We added, in
fact, the tie of mutual interest to that of consan-
guinity..
The operation of this colonizing policy, thus far,
we need not dwell upon. It has been a potent source
of our present greatness. It has afforded us vast
markets for the products of our united industry and
capital ; for the preservation of which, against foreign
aggression, we have not hesitated to expend both
treasure and blood. The whole world has regarded
these colonies as the feeders of the national strength;
the 'arteries of that powerful and imposing fabric
of Which these circumscribed islands are the mighty
_heart. If a blow has been dealt against the great-
nesss of England, the attempt has been made against
some weak portion of her colonial empire. On
social grounds, too, how vast has been the benefit
reaped from these possessions ! If our population
has increased beyond the national means of profit-
ably employing it, the tide of emigration has flowed,
not -towards alien countries, to carry the arts and
the energies of Englishmen to en rich and strengthen
rival countries, but towards countries leagued with
us in friendship, in interest, and in brotherhood—
peopled with the same race, revering the same laws,
and speaking the same tongue. It has borne along
with it civilization and Christianity to every quarter
of the globe. Nay, if ever there was instrumen-
tality which, maintained in its integrity, promised
the working out, under Providence, of the full
scheme of Redemption of mankind, it was the great
colonial fabric of this country.
Apart, however, from these higher considerations,
and to return to the mere commercial and econo-
mical view of the subject, it is scarcely possible to
over-estimate the amount of advantage which her
colonies, under a wise system of treatment, might
have been the means of conferring upon Great
Britain.

"I have often imagined," remarked Sir Howard Dou-
glas,. "and it was for this that I moved for, and obtained
-the order of this house, for the extensive returns which are
now preparing, namely, the various colonial tariffs and
commercial relations at present subsisting between all the
colonies of the empire and the mother country, and be-
tween the colonies themselves—that it might really be
possible to treat colonies like counties of the country, not
only in direct trade with the United Kingdom but in com-
mercial intercourse with each other, by free trade among
ourselves, under a reasonable moderate degree of protec-
tion from without, and so resolve the United Kingdom,
and all her colonies and possessions, into a commercial
union such as might defy all rivalry, and defeat all com-
binations. Then might colonization er-cced on a gigantic
scale'.—then might British capital animate British labour,
on British soil, for British objects, throughout the exten-
ded dominions of the British empire. Such an union is
the United States of America—a confederation of sove-
reign states, leagued together for commercial and political
purposes, with the most perfect free trade within, and a
stringent protection from without; end sienally, surely,
has that commercial league succeeded and flourished."
How true is this view of our position ! How
forcibly it must strike any impartial man who will
take the trouble of casting his eye over the extent of
the territories referred to, and to examine their vast
-and varied productive power. Take India alone,
with her three hundred millions of population, and
see of what she is capable. Sir Howard Douglas
reminds us that
"The whole amount of manufactures exported to India
does not at present exceed £8,000,000 (in 1844, £7,695,666
including Ceylon). If we were to encourage as wt might
the natural productions of British India, to enable her
the better to pay for British goods, there is scarcely any
assignable limit to the increase of that vast market of con-
sumption for the productions of British industry ; the de-
mands fel. British cotton goods, in particular, if the popu-
lation took but at the rate of—per bead, it would amount
to £50,010,000 sterling ; and the demand for woollens,
silks; pottery, glass, plated wares, cutlery, iron, brass and
copper implements, and an infinity of articles for domes-
tic use, would be prodigiously increased."
Canada again—where is the limit of consumption
to be drawn from that vast country when its wilds
shall have been peopled and cultivated by an indus-
trious and thriving British population ? Need we
point, either, at the vast capability of our posses-
sions in Australia and New Zealand to satisfy any
reasonable man of the almost unlimited means
which we possess, within our own empire, of em-
ploying. fully and profitably the industry of the
British people ? We feel that we need not.
Is-the measure, then, the principle of which has
just received the sanction of a large majority of the.
Reuse of Commons, one which is compatible with
the preservation, in their present usefulness, of
these noble possessions of our country? We main-
tain that it is not : that, on the contrary, it is one
which strikes at the leading principle upon which
our colonial system is based, by withdrawing from
our colonies the tie of commercial advantage which
so materially aids in securing their allegiance to the
mother country. 'rake, for instance, the case of
Canada. What is that country henceforth to re-
ceive in the shape of benefit from the connexion with
and loyalty towards the mother country ? What is
there to induce her much longer to submit to have
her fiscal and administrative policy controlled by the
British Legislature ? Nothing. Canada, as an in-
dependent nation, or confederation of independent
states, would enjoy all the advantages, with respect
to British markets, which she is henceforth to enjoy
as a colony, with the exception only of her protec-
tion by the arms of Great Britain from the aggres-
sion of foreign powers. Concede the measure now
before the House of Commons, and she has hence-
forth'nothinglo cement her to this country. Nay,
- she has much, in our recent conduct towards her,
to provoke exasperated feeling, or, at least, well-
grounded disappointments. Threa years ago we
passed the Canada Corn Bill, by which we gave a
preference in our markets to the wheat or other
produce of Canada, or produce coming through that
country, over those of other countries. We fostered
the growth of an immense trade upon the river St.
Lawrence, by which the shipping interest of Great
Britain would ultimately have derived vast benefit,
and to condUct which effectively Canada has already
expended large sums*, in improving her inland com-
munications with the sea, and is meditating further
improvements, the carrying out of which would
bring the rich virgin soils of her interior within a
day or two in distance from the ports of shipment,