Colonial trade

“ Now, admitting that the sixteen millions, as stated, of exports colonial do contrast unfavourably with the thirty-five millions of foreign, and that by all the difference, by more than the difference, colonial trade is disparaged in its importance, what becomes of this arithmetical illustration of the superiority of foreign trade, when by the same standard we come to measure it against the home trade, scarcely less a subject of depreciation and vituperation than the colonial, with thinkers of the same impenetrable, if not profound class as the member for Stockport? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am the last man to contend that preferential trade alone is a sufficient bond of Empire. But I do contend that the maintenance or creation of other bonds becomes very difficult, if in the vitally important sphere of commerce we are to make no distinction between our fellow-citizens across the seas and foreigners. Closer trade relations involve closer relations in all other respects. An advantage, even a slight advantage, to Colonial imports in the great British market would tend to the development of the Colonies as compared with the foreign nations who compete with them. ”

“ Imports from the colonies rose from £500,000 to more than £1,000,000, and exports to the colonies from £105,910 to £750,000. But the mere increase of trade was no perfect index of the importance of the plantations; for the colonial trade built up the merchant marine far more, in proportion to its volume, than any other. The American voyages were long; plantation commodities bulked large in proportion to their value; and whereas much of the commerce between England and Europe was carried in foreign ships, colonial trade was confined to British vessels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But after these manufacturers had thus bled the colonies of all their vitality, in the shape of capital, for upwards of half a century—after the colonies' right arm had been tied up so long, for their express benefit, that it became impotent from want of exercise, these same manufacturers turned round and told their colonial partners—"We have now made all we can out of you or, if we have not, we think we can make a little more by free trade than we can by keeping our honest engagements with you. ”

“ This practice played a great part in the transactions taking place in and between Great Britain and the United States concerning the colonial trade. The traditional policy of Great Britain was to keep the trade with the colonies as exclusively as possible in the hands of the mother country. The United States, of course, desired to have the greatest possible freedom of trade with the British colonies, especially those in America, including the West India islands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we proceed by unconditional legislation, and offer up our colonial trade instead of giving up our coasting trade, I believe she will get our colonial trade, and may then be ready to give up some comparatively insignificant advantages in return; but America is not a lover of Free-trade in the abstract. ”

“ The total profit upon a foreign trade of thirty-five millions, to place it on an equal rateable footing with colonial, should be, not three millions and an eighth, but upwards of five millions, or the colonial trade of sixteen millions, if no more gainful than foreign, should be, not L.2,300,000, but about one million less. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This depreciation, he said, was caused by the manner in which colonial produce was taxed, the prohibition of its export otherwise than to the mother country, and the unwise restrictions laid on the home trade. He proposed that colonial sugar should be used in our breweries and distilleries, and that colonial rum should be used in our navy. 3. ‘Thoughts on the Value to Great Britain of Commerce in general, and of the Colonial Trade in particular’ (1807) . This work insisted on the very great value of our West India trade. ”

“ They purchase extensively of colonial traders, iron pots, kettles, saucepans, and tin utensils, as also every kind of wearing apparel, and if the country is protected from Boer marauders, the British merchant may look forward at no distant date to an extension of trade in these regions, over and above the present sales, up to several millions annually, as the great stride towards civilisation during my time has been most satisfactory. ”

“ Amongst the peculiarities of colonial trade is a strong preference for local manufactures, with the exception of wine. A large manufacturer of agricultural machinery, who has just been making a tour of the colonies, tells me that he finds merchants actually prefer an inferior and dearer article locally made, if it appears at all equal to the English one in appearance. ”

“ Free imports have permitted the most rapid and complete closing of the continental markets, where our trade in manufactures is declining; they must facilitate and encourage the closing of the neutral markets, where our trade is still increasing; and must lead to the loss of the colonial markets, which a generation ago were the least, as they are now the most, valuable of the three great groups, and where alone we have the opportunity of making our position secure for as long as there is any need to look. ”

“ Though these aggressions have hitherto been principally committed on cargoes of colonial produce, where only we can find a market for the produce of the Middle and Eastern States, yet the principles are equally applicable to much of our East India trade, and to the trade with France, Spain, and Holland, from which we derive most of the favorable balance of trade, which enables us to discharge the unfavorable balance of trade with Great Britain ”

“ Meanwhile, simultaneously with the movement in favour of reciprocal fiscal advantages to be granted within the empire by the many local governments to each other, there was a growth of the perception that an increase of the foreign trade of Great Britain, carried on chiefly in manufactured goods, was accompanied by a corresponding enlargement of the home markets for colonial raw material, and consequently that injury to the foreign trade of Great Britain, while as yet it so largely outweighed the trade between the United Kingdom and the colonies, must necessarily react upon the colonies. ”

“ The value of what is technically called colonial produce at present produced in the British colonial possessions, the East Indies included, is about £10,000,000 yearly, from a capital invested to the extent of £150,000,000. The trade thus created employs 800 ships, 300,000 tons, and 17,000 seamen yearly. This is the yearly value of the property and produce of the British Tropical agricultural trade, now dependent upon free labour. ”

“ The Navigation Acts, for example, redounded to the advantage of American shipbuilders and the producers of hemp, tar, lumber, and ship stores in general. Favors in British ports were granted to colonial producers as against foreign competitors and in some instances bounties were paid by England to encourage colonial enterprise. Taken all in all, there is much justification in the argument advanced by some modern scholars to the effect that the colonists gained more than they lost by British trade and industrial legislation. ”

“ Customs duties the chief revenue of the ColoniesCommercial federation on the basis of free trade within the Empire is out of the question in the immediate future for the obvious reason that most of our Colonies raise the greater part of their revenues from customs duties, that British goods form a large proportion of their imports, and that it would take time for the Colonial Governments to substitute other sources of revenue which they now derive from duties on British goods. ”

“ The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid. ”

“ So vast, various, and growing are the British colonies in every quarter of the globe, that half our export trade had become to us a home trade; and we enjoyed the inestimable advantage, hitherto unknown to any country that ever existed, of reaping domestic profits at each end of the chain which encircled the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The merchant in British colonies is familiar with British firms and trademarks and rather resents the necessity of becoming acquainted with foreign wares and the standing of foreign merchants. Prices being equal, we patronise the people we know and like. Investment also leads to trade. The Englishmen who control the vast resources of India, tend, without compulsion, to buy of British merchants. The possession of even a free-trade colony often insures the retention of its most profitable commerce. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ It will be easily understood how such a system must affect the colonies. A colony under the Mercantile System became merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices, which was to be tapped for the benefit of the home country. The Asiatic, American and African supply of precious metals and the raw materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of the state which happened to own that particular colony. No outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a foreign flag. ”

“ Domingo to cultivate sugar and other plantation-produce sufficient to supply all Europe; and by such means prevent Great Britain’s reaping the advantage that she derives from the exportation of the produce of her colonies: which is so essential a benefit to her, and is one of the first causes of our receiving a balance of trade from foreign countries, and in which the landed interest, merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain and Ireland, as also the planters and merchants in our colonies, are so materially concerned and interested. ”