COLONIAL NEGLECT AND FOREIGN PROPITIATION.
Among the various and pressing interests, the consideration of which is now brought home to the British Empire, there is none which is of such paramount and growing importance as the extension of our Colonial Empire, and the securing of our connexion with it. The more minutely and anxiously that our social condition at home is considered, the more it will be found that the maintenance, not only of our domestic prosperity but of our national independence, is entirely dependent upon promoting the growth and maintaining the connexion with our colonies; and that our trade with other countries, so far from being a source of strength, may at once be converted into the greatest cause of weakness on the next occasion in which this country is engaged in a maritime contest. The facts on this subject which are to be found in our Parliamentary Reports are of the very highest importance, and perfectly decisive of the vast superiority of colonial to foreign commerce. Nevertheless, that they are very little known, even by those whose whole fortune and interests are wound up with the subject, appears in the most striking manner from the astonishment which the facts connected with this subject never fail to excite when stated to an intelligent and respectable assembly; and, unless these facts are constantly brought home to the public mind, and come at length to influence the measures of Government by the accumulated force of public thought, it may confidently be predicted that a catastrophe, at some future and possibly not distant period, awaits the British empire, greater, perhaps, than has ever yet befallen any civilized nation.
We have now been so long in the enjoyment of profound peace, and in the possession of an export commerce to every quarter of the globe, that the older part of the present generation have forgotten, the younger never have experienced, what it was to have the export trade of England to nearly all but its own colonies closed by foreign hostility. Fortunately, however, the experiment has been tried, and a durable monument remains of the consequences which result to all classes in this country from such a stoppage in the vent for our produce. In the year 1811, the hostility of Napoleon had closed all the harbours in Europe against our commerce, while the Americans, by a new Intercourse Act, shut us out from every harbour in the United States. The consequence was, that the exports of Great Britain, which, in the year 1810, amounted to forty-three millions, sank in the next year to twenty-seven; and the fall in the exports and imports taken together for the one year, amounted to no less than thirty-six millions. Mr Brougham, in terms no less just than eloquent, in the debate upon the Repeal of the Orders in Council in 1812, thus described the state to which the manufacturing districts in England were reduced by this calamity:—"Take, for example, one of our great staples, the hardware, and look to Warwickshire, where it used to flourish. Birmingham and its neighbourhood, a district of thirteen miles round that centre, was formerly but one village, I may say one continued workshop, peopled with about 400,000 of the most industrious and skilful of mankind. In what state do you now find that once busy hive of men? Silent, still, and desolate during half the week; during the rest of it miserably toiling at reduced wages, for a pittance scarcely sufficient to maintain animal life in the lowest state of comfort, and at all times swarming with unhappy persons, willing, anxious to work for their lives, but unable to find employment. He must have a stout heart within him, who can view such a scene and not shudder. But even this is not all: matters are getting worse and worse; the manufacturers are waiting for your decision, and if that be against them they will instantly yield to their fate, and turn adrift the people whom they still, though inadequately, support with employment."—"In the West Riding of Yorkshire, the applications to the parish officers have so alarmingly increased, that they have given repeated warnings to the master manufacturers, and I believe to the higher authorities,
