Colonial economy

“ By a properly conducted colonization, in the first place, diminishing the labour-supply, and acting as a stimulus to our labour-market, and afterwards affording a continually increasing stimulus by means of the new-created, fast-extending colonial field of demand for British manufactures, and all this working in mutual reaction to excite industry, we may in reality go on improving till Britain produce ten times over what she now produces. ”

“ Betwixt the relative importance in the cost, and in the profit and loss sense, of foreign and colonial trade, on which the question of the advantages or disadvantages attending the possession or retention of colonies is made exclusively to hinge, with a narrow-mindedness incapable of appreciating the other high political and social interests, the moral and religious considerations, moreover, involved—we shall now proceed with the task of arbitrating and striking the balance. ”

“ This practice was a natural corollary from the vicious theory of colonial policy—once common to all Europe, and not yet completely relinquished by any other people—which regarded colonies as valuable by affording markets for our commodities that could be kept entirely to ourselves; a privilege we valued so highly that we thought it worth purchasing by allowing to the colonies the same monopoly of our market for their own productions which we claimed for our commodities in theirs. ”

“ Various laborious researches into the real values of colonial and foreign exported commodities, have amply satisfied our mind, as they would those of any impartial person capable of investigation into special facts, of the superior comparative value, in the mercantile and manufacturing, or individual sense, as well, more specially, as in the economical and social, or national sense, of colonial over foreign trade. ”

“ The principle which Great Britain has adopted in her future agricultural relations with the Tropical world is, that colonial produce must be produced, and that it can be produced in that region cheaper by free African and East Indian labour than by slave labour. ”

“ As in other places, the United States and Germany have pushed for business, and the former managed in 1908 to export over a million's worth of goods to the Colony, while taking nothing like an equivalent value of colonial produce in, return. ”

“ An equally natural desire on the part of the larger colonies to profit by the opportunity which was opened to them of establishing local manufactures of their own, combined with the convenience in new countries of using the customs as an instrument of taxation, led to something like a reciprocal feeling of resentment, and there followed a period during which the policy of Great Britain was to show no consideration for colonial trade, and the policy of the principal colonies was to impose heavy duties upon British trade. ”

“ The territories to which this trade caters have a population of about twenty-two million in Asia and twenty-five million in Africa. If we include the French islands in America and French Guiana, the exports of French merchandise to all her colonies amount to about 95,000,000 francs. If we include the allowance for colonial service from the naval and military budget, France has an expense that exceeds the amount of her colonial export trade. ”

“ Capital could not only be accumulated in Africa, but attracted from the white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as legitimate home industry offers. ”

“ A new country, with cheap land and dear labour, must always devote itself mainly to the production of raw materials, and to many of these colonial raw materials Great Britain gave a preference or bounties. At the same {32} time, as was only natural, the tendency was for the colonies to look on the advantages as no more than their due, and on the restrictions as selfish and unjustifiable. ”

“ I love to dwell on these details of colonial industry, because they serve to prove to the inhabitants of Europe, a fact which to the enlightened inhabitants of the colonies has long ceased to be doubtful, namely, that the continent of Spanish America can produce sugar, cotton, and indigo by free hands, and that the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasants, farmers, and landholders. ”

“ Nearly everything they sold had to go first to England, and they had also to buy the most of their manufactures from the people of the mother country. At that time all European nations thought that their colonies existed for the good of the mother countries, and so they tried to keep the colonial markets for their own trade. ”

“ In granting this economic freedom to her other colonies, England has strengthened their ties to the mother country. With industrial freedom assured, a colonial country may be indifferent to the form of its political government. ”

“ When the direct returns of the African trade in the eighteenth century are remembered; when it is noted how much colonial trade has contributed to British greatness, and when it is considered that England's colonial system was wholly built upon African slavery, the intelligent reader will be convinced that the slave trade was the corner-stone of the present splendid prosperity of that Empire. ”

“ In part to avoid allowing foreigners to benefit from the imperial trade, and to retain the carrying profits within the Empire, but mainly to build up the merchant fleet, it was decreed that all goods must be transported in vessels belonging to the mother-country or her colonies. Foreign goods, according to the theory, would have to be excluded as far as possible from the colonial markets, the products of the latter limited to the English market, and colonial manufacturing restrained so as not to compete with home-made goods, although the theory was never fully translated into practice. ”

“ Though the labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great centers of commerce and finance on the seaboard originated in the days when the king of England was "lord of these dominions." ”

“ For it is to be observed that it is under legislative protection—bounties, bonuses, drawbacks, export and especially import duties—that almost every colonial industry has grown up, as the industries of the mother country grew up. Sometimes the profit in a particular undertaking is exactly equal to the amount of the import duty, and it is seldom greater. ”

“ With the multiplication and development of improved means of communication, the pulsations of colonial life are more quickly and keenly felt at the heart of the empire. Their political importance is no longer ignored; but it is open to some doubt if their commercial importance is as yet adequately recognized. What fields are there not here open for the employment of British capital in exploiting our mineral wealth alone. ”

“ He has given illustrations which he thinks indicate that a fiscal arrangement which favours the productions of the colonies would not result in raising the price of food materially in Great Britain, while it would give stimulus to colonial industry and increase the colonial market for British manufactures to the great advantage of the British working man. ”

“ A vigorous colonial policy, too, will certainly improve the national prosperity if directed, on the one hand, to producing in our own colonies the raw materials which our industries derive in immense quantities from foreign countries, and so making us gradually independent of foreign countries ”

“ And this prosperity was on the increase, the three great colonial interests—mining, agriculture, and squatting—were more prosperous than they had been for the past ten years. A community where property is widely diffused among the class who actually till the land is of all others the community most contented, most orderly, and where manners are simplest and morals purest—and that class of cultivators obtain most from the soil and increase most rapidly the savings which constitute the wealth of a nation. ”

“ To lay open the interior regions of North Africa to British enterprise--to supply those vast and unexplored countries with British manufactures, with East-India goods, and with colonial produce.
2dly, To encourage our manufactories, by opening a new market calculated to improve the revenue of the country, to provide employment for the labouring poor, and to enrich the mercantile community; the genial influence of which sources of prosperity will necessarily diffuse itself through all classes. ”

“ Hence it is that the Colonial Government are straining every nerve, by holding out certain material advantages and inducements, to attract land-purchasers and handicraftsmen to a country, which, inhabited at present by not more than 130,000 human beings, is quite capable of supporting 30,000,000. ”

“ Any importations of labour from over the seas merely serve to render more distressful the unfortunate position of the colonial out-of-works. On the other hand, we do now, and always have, welcomed new arrivals who may be able, in the near future, to effectively augment our productive wealth. The party fully recognizes the need of population—of the right sort. ”

“ The third cause of the world’s commercial progress during the past century has been colonial expansion. Germany, France, and other countries, influenced by the great success of the United Kingdom, have established colonies in different parts of the world, and assumed control over uncivilized peoples, until there are now 125 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies. ”

“ England superintends this colonial development from far away, and says herself that perhaps when the fruit is quite ripe it will fall naturally from the tree and begin another life even more independent than its first. No matter — the real bonds, at least the economic and commercial ones, will endure and relations with the mother-country will always increase. ”

“ Colonial intercourse is in effect a circumscribed kind of free trade, under peculiarly favourable circumstances; and the amazing increase, and vast extent and advantage, of our colonial trade, is the most direct proof of the advantage, not only to Britain, but to mankind, which would result from free trade over all. Every enactment to prevent the exchange of the produce of labour between man and man, and nation and nation, if the article is not injurious to health and morals, is truly diabolic. ”

“ The clusters of colonial possessions which have been acquired on the east and west coasts of Africa, so rapidly and with so little cost or bloodshed, will unquestionably prove an invaluable, if not indeed a necessary feature of the British Empire. From these vast plantations will be drawn the raw materials of many of our most important industries; to them will flow a continuous and broadening train of British products; and in them the peculiar gifts for administration and high civic virtues of our race may find a healthy and an honourable scope. ”

“ For the lands in Britain must always rise and fall in proportion as our manufactures and navigation prosper or decline, and the national revenue encrease or diminish, as the trade of our colonies is in a more or less flourishing way. ”

“ I have but proved the necessity of French colonial expansion in colonies of exploration.
If we wish to turn our distant possessions to account, the criminal of yesterday, the dangerous member of society, might go there, and in directing industrial or commercial enterprises find legitimate employment and a fair return for all his intelligent efforts and for the work and study of his youth.
There is plenty of labour to be obtained out there, for it is only the natives, of whatever tribe or colour, whose temperament is hostile to manual work. ”

“ It is the trade of the colonies that renders them beneficial to the mother country. Our trade, as it is now and always has been conducted, centers in Great Britain, and in return for her manufactures affords her more ready cash, beyond any comparison, than can possibly be expected by the most sanguine promoters of these extraordinary methods. We are in short ultimately yielding large supplies to the revenues of the mother country while we are laboring for a very moderate subsistence for ourselves. ”

“ Our factories, for they cannot yet be called colonies, on the coast of Africa, offer us the like advantages. Why are they not turned into populous and powerful colonies, as they might be? Why not encouraged from hence? And why is not their trade espoused and protected as our other colonies and factories? ”

“ If the colonies, as is now palpable to all America, have worked but with one arm towards prosperity, while the States have worked with two, it was England's manufacturing interests that tied the colonies' arm. ”

“ These exported products were sent away from our shores by a mere handful of rich persons who saw in foreign or Colonial loans or enterprises the opportunity of gaining a higher rate of interest than at home. Year by year there is returned to those who made the investments, or to their successors in title, a tribute of foreign and Colonial commodities which goes to swell our imports. ”

“ Colonies, governors urge reforms, 21-22; defense of, 29 et seq.; lack of coöperation among, 37; relation of assemblies and governors, 38; population, 50-51; wealth, 51-52; trade, 53-55; governors, 58-61; legislative independence, 131; see also Army, Commerce, Conciliation, Taxation, and colonies by name.
Commerce, trade with West Indies, 26, 28; increase (1748-1760) , 54; colonial merchants agree to non-importation, 139-140; London merchants petition Parliament, 141; effects of non-importation agreement, 143-147. ”