interests, and will protect labour. The onlydifference they will obey natural instincts until they be philoso Let us suppose that by casting off the colonies we reduce this trade to the proportion of our best foreign customers, the United States; then divide 20 by 5 and we have 4--that is, £1,000,000 of annual exports as the result, instead of the present £20,000,000, and a deficiency in our annual sales of £16,000,000. We have not the means of reckoning, at present, the precise sum produced by this trade after paying for the raw material required in these various productions, and imported from foreign countries; but we produce, at home, part of all the various raw materials required for clothing fabrics, except silks, cotton, and dyes. We produce wool, and now flax and hemp, in large quantities; and they enter into part of all the finished goods, in their class, which we export. In the hard-flag is expelled, our goods will follow. They shail be ware, iron, and metal trades, we produce the raw material in this country. We, therefore, think that we may reckon on £12,000,000 being the amount of wages which, in cutting the colonial cord, we are advised to throw away-that being three-fourths of the deficiency of £16,000,000 which the proposed change will cause, if our colonies, after their annexation with some other state, or after their independence has been achieved-purchase from us-on an equality with our best present foreign customer. The value of these extra purchases does not appear from the money paid in wages. That sum alone now yields employment to a great number of men, and support to many families, for whom, when it fails, provision must be made in some other way-probably from the poor-rates. The nation could consume itself, and that operation would go forward until our debts were repudiated, our credit destroyed, and the earnings of the most industrious classes mortgaged. We are told || of a remedy. If we sell not, it is said we cannot buy; and it is said truly, that we cannot buy after our money is done, and our credit gone. The evil, it is confidently asserted, will cure itself. All evils cure themselves in the same way. Fevers wear themselves out, but they leave their subject weakened or dead; extravagance comes to an end, when the spendthrift is poor or ruined. We must buy less, say these Jobian comforters; so we must buy less, eat less, and wear less; but what availeth it to the paralysed arm of industry that it has been bound up by extravagance on the one hand, or old monopoly on the other? If nations do not trade with us, we are assured that they must injure themselves; but what do we gain by their loss? That helps us not. They may become wretched in sharing our misery, without alleviating our distress. The disjointed colonies, we are told, will not increase their import duties on our goods after they are fairly in business for themselves; but who authorised any man to make that statement? The lying spirit that tempted statesmen to believe Mr. Bancroft, and trust in his promises of reciprocity from the United States. The democracy of the colonies will do what all other democracies in all ages have done, will yield to the temptation of apparently providing for their own taxed out of them, to the loss, we believe, of the colonists themselves, who will sink in less productive employments the labour and the money that should be employed in clearing forests and cultivating farms. The sacrifice of the colonics is the demission of property by persons who cannot pay their debts. It is a fraudulent assignment, by an embarrassed nation, of property, without any benefit. The value of fixed property in Great Britain is reckoned equal to five times the national debt. One gentleman, we believe, makes it equal to ten times the debt, and proposes one great tax of ten per cent. for its extirpation. That is an open course. Let us be just ere we be generous. Let us pay that debt ere we further weaken the security; for these valuations of property are perfectly fictitious, but the debt is real. How many landowners and mortgagees have discovered that debt and its interest were fixed, while the price of land was moveable. Fixed fasts and moveable feasts are the fate of the embarassed. Cholera reduced travelling for a few weeks in August and September. The weekly receipts in railways fell in consequence. The London and North Western was some £8,000, in all, short of last year's fares. Terror immediately seized weak holders. The number of sellers became greater than that of buyers, and the stock was affected 10 per cent. The value of the London and North Western Railway fell by £2,000,000 on account of this £8,000. All other railway property was diminished in value, by similar causes, in a greater or lesser proportion. But if all railway property were offered for sale together, it might be had for an old song, yet the debentures would not change. An Irish estate, from which all the farmers have combined to sweep off corn and cattle and pay no rent, will bring very little in the market. A man with ten thousand a year may die of starvation, in one of his own ditches, under these circumstances. A cotton mill will be had wonderfully cheap, if there be no cotton to spin, or merchants refuse the yarns at any price. All these catastrophies will not affect the weight and sharpness of the debt pressing on the English people. It must be paid, and therefore they must have business out of which to make profits, and pay interest. So they enough, the Heathens are wiser than the Christians in this respect. Those new tariffs, again, that the Christian states, by courtesy so called, have recently passed, are injurious to us. The United States talks of raising its duties. Hamburg has joined the Zollverein. Switzerland has raised its rate of taxes on imports. The new Spanish tariff is an increased tax on many goods, and on all secures the carrying trade by a differential duty added on goods brought by any except Spanish vessels, of greater amount than the freight. cannot voluntarily cast away their colonial trade, || without dishonesty. Never fear, indeed, say those who inferentially or directly advise that course; never fear-trade will flow in-demand will arise-if you buy you must sell somewhere, and to somebody. These are all nice generalities. They are mere assumptions, laid down without any proof of their accuracy. Hopes and expectations are very fine, but they cannot be put into a ledger. We desiderate facts, and behold we are offered anticipations, wishes, desires, hopes, Will o' the Wisps-mere bog candles, the miasma of stag-|| nant minds. We can only buy if we sell. True, when All these facts will drive us backward, unless some our money is done, when our accumulated stock is decisive measures be soon adopted. Happy in a Parliasquandered; but we may neither sell nor buy largely, ment that may live until 1552 or 1853, the Whig and is it a comfort to our operative classes that they Ministry, more powerful in the press than any precedare to be led into misery by the new road instead of ing Administration, rejoice over their salaries—handthe old ? To all these statements, the ready answer some in amount, and paid quarterly. But they do is questions-Are not the working classes comfortable know, that the elections, as they occur, are not gratinow? Is not food cheap, good, and abundant? Are fying to their supporters. They have Ireland denot work and wages fair in amount and quantity? We murely recurring to murder, as a daily practice, and do not deny this statement, but in the meantime we adding thereto the wholesale theft of crops. They have our colonial trade, impaired in some instances, have all the colonies at war with their secretary and but still existing, and in the present year greatly in his staff. They have Jamaica, Guiana, and other poscreasing. Even with its increase, our exports have sessions, refusing to levy taxes, and running up arrears not kept pace with our imports. The returns of the which this overpressed British people must clear away. Board of Trade, quoted in the press as the evidence of All these misunderstandings exist because the Colonial glowing prosperity, prove the reverse. All the jour. Office, in a body, have registered a vow, at the respecnals quote them exultingly, because these returns are || tive bankers of the various gentlemen, against paying one-sided. They give a money value to our exports to their friends, or taking for themselves, a peuny or which is presumed to be correct, and is, nevertheless, a pound less than was in the bonds. The Cape Town a mere assumption. The price put down may be rea-colony refused one of our exports—our surplus fellised in the continental and colonial trades, but many oury-and by their determination beat Earl Grey and exports to the independent States of America do not his "merry men all;" but the Cape Town has a produce their nominal value. Some large manufac-talented soldier as governor; and who, while he exturers treat the States markets as safety valves, into pressed his determination to enforce the law, conwhich they throw their surplus goods, and take theircealed not his conviction that the imports of felous chance of prices. We cannot, therefore, feel assured were unnecessary, and highly prejudicial. Port Philip, that our exports produce the value put on them in the most assuredly, will gain a similar triumph. Any returns of the Board of Trade, but the price of the colony, not in the fangs of the family, can beat the imports can be easily ascertained. The returns in the Office in the long run; but those unfortunate possesmeantime are deceptive. The figures are not cooked, sions, once handed over to one of "our cousins," are but the system is doctored. Mr. Newdegate, a pro-in a bad way for constitutional redress. tective member, anxious to return to protection and monopoly, published a pamphlet, some time ago, in which he endeavoured to show that the balance of trade for several years was largely against this country. The pamphlet was vigorously assailed, and holes were cut in it by the exponents of the existing nondescript What, then, do we require? We are neither retrogres system of trading in this country. They found out, sive, conservative, nor obstructive. These terminations or said that they had discovered, one mistake here and suit us not. We are for progress. It is a good word, another there; but the plain and vexing fact remains, and implies a necessity. We must progress bakwards that while our exports have increased in 1849 over 1848, or onwards. Now we are going back. Peel's imyet our imports have grown far more rapidly. If any pulse sent us on a bad track. He is a plausible man will take pen in hand, and calculate the cost of leader, and accused by his party of deserting them— grain imported in 1849, he will discover the excess of He may only have played a deep game for their good. the present year hitherto over 1818 to be more than Quintus Curtius-like, he rode his horses, pride and all the increase of our exports, even at their nominal place, into the gulf, and bade it close to save his value. We have also been importing other articles friends. He found true free trade inevitable, and hit more largely, and the balance of trade is this year, upout a mixture, under the name, that would not work, to 10th October, against us by a sum of at least £4,000,000, likely to be made £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 before we close. A minute examination into these details will disclose the fact, that our great additional sales have been colonial, or to those markets where our goods are admitted almost free-to China, to Turkey, and equally liberal powers; for, strangely The colonies are in danger. The empire is parting. We are in the progress downwards, and commence our second millennium, as Anglo-Saxons, with bad prospects, unless our policy be decisively and rapidly changed. in the hope that the sickened patient would fall back into the practice of the old pills, and the prescriptions of the old doctor. This is one solution of his movements, and it may be not less true than others. We want free trade as a world's blessing-a bond of peace-a source of mutual and ever-growing happiness and prosperity; but it is the trade expounded in This position brings us to another and important argument for maintaining the empire in its present extent and strength. The people of this country are responsible for a heavy national debt. A large part of the sum has been incurred for the benefit, defence, and maintenance of the colonies. If they are sacriticed, we lose all that money, although we must continue to pay the interest, and finally, perhaps, the principal. The unallocated lands of the colonies may fairly be regarded as security and value for part of this debt, and as our legislators pass them away, they abandon the value which the people of Britain possessed for a great transaction, but compel them to pay its price. A committee of investigation into the conduct of these trustees, like those committees recently appointed to examine the affairs of railway companies, would present a black report on past grants. Our government has no more right to deal with public property as they have dealt, than the directors of a railway have first to construct a branch by payments out of the company's funds, and then make it over to a few private individuals for nothing. The Hudsons and the Glyns would be held personally responsible, to their last shilling, for a proceeding of that nature, and the Greys had better watch warily their conduct; for a great infusion of the popular principle into the House of Commons might lonies may have been in practice balanced off against trading privileges; but on their abolition, which is occurring rapidly, we should lose everything except the debt. Colonel Thompson's catechism of the corn laws, when || is bound up in the rapid sale and cultivation of the the weaver here may freely exchange his web with the wastes and forests around their homes. farmer elsewhere for a barrel of flour, or whatever the former requires and the latter can sell. This result is not yet obtained. The State, for public purposes, intervenes, and charges a high sum for license to make the transaction. The only advance made is, that our Government gets, in many cases, no share of this money contributed by two nations; for wherever a high import tax is charged on goods, it is paid partly by both buyer and seller. The absurd idea that we have no interest in the tariffs of foreign countries is abolished. No sane man would now name it before an intelligent audience. Some men say that we do well in spite of high tariffs, but they will not deny that we could do better without them. Let us, therefore, try for the better fate, and not rest contented with cuts of prosperity, when we may pluck the fruit unchipped and unblemished from the tree. The position of our trade with the United States and the European powers, with few exceptions, is that of a taxed business, in which the proceeds of the tax are all paid over to foreign governments. The trade with the colonies, with China, Turkey, and some other countries, is also a taxed business, but one in which we keep very nearly all the proceeds of the taxation. The system is, therefore, unequal and unjust, and demands an immediate revisal in justice to China, to Turkey, to foreign Heathens and colonial Christians-be dangerous to them. This superiority over the cobut the latter class of sufferers, in Canada, take reparation into their own hands. The decomposition of the empire would be most injurious to free trade principles, for it would add the colonies to the taxing countries; while the existence of the empire would be highly beneficial to free intercourse, because it is at once a great British League, superior to the Zollverein, to the United States, and to Russia; within which || alone can we show, by example, the beneficial operation of our theories. This circumstance should influence the conduct of liberal politicians. Foreign nations may refuse to reciprocate our purposes; but the colonies desire nothing more than untaxed trade between them and the home country, which should be only the centre and heart of the empire. Fo- If material interests alone stood in the way of those reign nations may decree exclusive dealing in times pestiferous projects of decomposition entertained of such distress and scarcity as we have felt and silently by some men, whispered in treachery's silken seen, but the stores of the colonies are always open to dialect by others, spoken complacently as a foreknown our population, and no arbitrary decree can ever come doom by political fatalists, we should still oppose them between them and our requirements. The union be- with what energy we could command. But interests tween this country and its colonies should be complete dearer still than profit or property-treasures nobler —a federative union, in which they should be fairly much than those of gold-are staked upon a conflict, and fully represented. The advantages and honours with the existence of which the people of this country open to the Queen's subjects in the Lothians or Lan- seem scarcely yet acquainted, although in it they are cashire should be equally open to them in Jamaica or so deeply interested. The progress of science, of inin Canada. Objections of a chimerical character may tellect, of morals, and faith, is ultimately associated be made to this arrangement, on account of distance with the existence of this empire. In times, and ways and other difficulties, but Halifax, in Nova Scotia, is many, we have actively sinned against the interests of not now farther from London than Edinburgh was at the Aborigines in our colonies and possessions; the the period of the union, while the difficulties and dan-uncounted millions committed to our care; in instances gers of intercourse in the first case are fewer than they were in the last. A difference in taxation is already recognised in Scotland, and in Ireland especially, so that this provision need not mar the scheme. A small tax on now waste public lands, as they may be allocated, would meet the colonial share of taxation, and would not injure the colonists; for their great interest Are these trading privileges valuable? The returns of exports answer that question. A great portion of the press quote in triumph the increased exports of 1849. They form a legitimate subject of triumph, but they have mainly occurred in the colonial trade, and the business with countries that charge on our goods a colonial duty. They illustrate the great advantage of untaxed intercourse, but they do not sup port the hybrid measures which modern statesmen dignify by the name of free trade. innumerable, we have neglected them. Now, at least in many minds, a new sense of duty is awakened. Our responsibilities are acknowledged. The power of our position for almost infinite good is felt. The woe that must fall from neglecting our talents for a merciful mission on the earth is confessed. The East looks to us for light and liberty, and we dare not wisely reject the appeal. The West offers homes for our race, and we need not ungraciously cut off from us for ever those of our number who accept the invitation. Africa is friendless amongst the nations in its barbarous and cruel traffics if we abandon a noble and|| self-imposed task. India illustrates our power and increases our responsibility. Only a few years have passed since India was considered merely a terra incognita where adventurous spirits sought death or fortune. The interests of the people were contemned, and yet, how marvellously they clung to the strangers from the west! Now, our Indian connexion is changed. Our power is no longer employed to prevent the influx of knowledge, of capital, and skill, into Hindostan. Our steamers breast its noble rivers. Our engineers are employed in the construction of its future railways. Our men of science engage in devising means for its improvement. Our language is spoken, read, and written, by its merchants in their commercial dealings. Our books are bought our science learned ;- -our literature sought with avidity by the Hindoos. Our schools are established in their cities, and our churches are scattered, not profusely, but as the seed of a great harvest over the Eastern land. And what has India done for us? Some years since we charged a differential duty against Indian sugars in the home market, and their quality was bad. That duty was equalised, and the sugars of Benares are now the highestpriced of our imports. A similar result will occur with cotton. The impediments to its transit will be removed, and India will furnish more than our spindles can work or our looms can weave. We want no raw material that India cannot produce, and is not willing to give in exchange for our manufactures. The intercourse requires no money from us. It is one entirely of barter, on which, therefore, we have a double profit. Its finances fully meet its expenses, and yield a dividend on all the money invested in its management. Its sons fight our battles-under our flag they have won their way from the plain to the mountains. Once more they have placed the Anglo-Saxon race on the Highlands of Central Asia; and on us rests the deep responsibility if we light not on their summits the torches of all knowledge, and of all freedom's blessings, until the old home of the human race arise again in more than the splendour that it bore when noble cities studded the Euphrates and the Tigris, and busy millions lived and struggled on that river's banks which has its springs among the mighty mountains; from which our race have twice descended to cultivate and inhabit the plains below. A nobler destiny could not be imagined for any people than to redeem Asia from its dreary night of thick darkness and superstition, to build again its "old waste places"-to turn its neglected plains into noble fields, once more to train upon its terraced mountains the culture long abandoned—to lead its multitudes on into the paths of peace, and science, and religious faith; to be the prophetic "Kings of the East," living with its many nations in amity, and ruling where we rule, through the law of love, in justice and in mercy. We believe that the interests of morality, intelligence, and religion, are deeply concerned in the maintenance of this empire. The facilities and security afforded by it to those who have information to convey; to those who oppose the crueltics practised by, and often on, the aborigines of distant lands; and especially to those who are engaged in propounding the great religious truths which comprehend all other information in their progress, are of unspeakable value. Let Tahiti teach to the contributors of missionary societies the importance of this empire. They expended men and money on Tahiti, to render the island, its people, and the liberty that they had been taught to enjoy, a more desirable prize for the spoiler. Within the British possessions, they have the security of the British power that no similar event will interrupt the progress of their missionaries who go forth under the flag of their country, their friends, and their sup porters. Half the danger of missionary labour is cleared away to them. The law, that made the homes of their youth peaceable and secure, casts its protection over their steps through all their generous pilgrimages. Their voluntary exile is shorn of half its sadness. The symbols of their country's power, assuming gradually the character of symbols also of its justice, are around and above them. The shield of their nation's greatness is interposed between them and aggression. The prestige of their country's fame favours, or it may be made to favour, their exertions. A charm hangs over their language to the Hindoo. He seeks to know the history, the literature, and the condition, of the once strange western race, who are slowly assuming towards his people the position of guides and allies, rather than of conquerors. The influence is powerful; for the man who wants to learn our language, to read our history, to study our literature, will reach his objects through our faith. The missionary has torn himself and his family from the endearments, associations, and advantages of home. The land to which he has wandered is strange to him and them. The companionship they loved is severed for long or for ever-for ever in time. Even the inanimate existences around speak not to them the language of past years. They miss the trees of their own country, and the olive compensates them not for the pine. The flowers which they cherished and tended in their northern home are the way-side weeds of the southern and eastern lands. Their flaunting gaudy colours speak not to the stranger's heart like the deep green of an English field. Hills covered with roses would not repay the northern wanderer for the purple heath of his own mountains. The sky above is not like that on which their infant eyes first rested, as, from gowany banks and braes, they looked, and watched, and wondered, at the strange shapes that floated far, far above the land, and marvelled whence they came, or whether they were going, and whose hidden hands were piloting their course. The Isun of day is not the kindly sun whose presence ever cheered and made glad their home, but a searching, scorching fire, from which they shrink and hide as from the pestilence, for the stroke of death is in its potent beams. The stars at night are new to them, and are not those on which they looked in childhood, and grew to know and love, and measure winter evenings by, from their place in the heavens! All things are changed but one-the flag that floats on public days in public places is still the same; still its folds, thrown out to the warm wind, show old figures and familiar colours, and bring an host of associations to the mind, genial, warm, and blissful!--not less valuable than the shield this flag denotes over the meanest buccanneers in nomine fidei freedom to knock down every mission station in the world. Liberal-minded Roman Catholics want no such triumph. They seek a willing assent to their tenets, like other professors; but French statesmen, who merely use the Church as a cloak for political objects, teach by the sabre, convince by the bayonet, take bullets for dogmas, artillery officers for priests, and marshalls of the republic for bishops of the Popedom, want no such just dealings. subject of the empire which it represents. The pounders used for converting purposes in Tahiti and wanderer feels still the force of that one potent Cochin China, used nominally in that way. The defragment. It averts the stroke of persecution-mission of our power now would merely give these secures an interest in his wondrous story, imparts force to his argument, and gives him a place at once amongst those for whom he works, that long years of faithful service might not command. Its presence in cludes other considerations. It indicates the neighbourhood of his countrymen; and leaves him not the solitary representative of his race. Some men, with kindred feelings, are near, to stand by him in danger, to cheer him in depression, to aid him in trouble, in sorrow, in sickness, to bury him in death. All these advantages are not to be estimated statistically. Their worth cannot be charged in pounds sterling-their existence does not affect the exchanges; and yet they may be worth more than gold can buy: they may lift up hands that are waxed feeble; impart consolation to hearts that are bruised, and vigour to spirits fainting under many cares. No man can look over the world's map, read the history of our possessions on the globe, form an acquaintance with the position of their inhabitants, and not feel that we may decline the task that these pos-man-stealing. The annexation of these colonies to the sessions imply, resign the advantages that they afford, give the world another example of an empire crumbling by the degeneracy of its people; but not thus fulfil our apparent destiny, not realise our real responsibilities, and not repay by our knowledge whatever of evil may have been inflicted in the attainment of our empire. The religions public have a thrilling and vital in terest in maintaining this empire, that they may work beneath its shades. Our crimes have been many in its formation, yet are we now the only permanent and powerful state to which outraged men and women, stolen, sold, and tortured, may look with confidence for aid. The anti-slavery party in every land should remember that fact. We gave twenty millions for the negrocs of the West India Islands, and many millions more to prevent and punish the crime of United States would undo all that has been completed. The twenty millions would be lost for ever, and that would be the smallest loss. The United States' immigrants would insist on restoring slavery. The negroes would necessarily oppose that scheme. They have now amongst them men of information-members of the legislature, and of the learned professions. They would want neither will nor leaders for war, but it would be a cruel contest, invoking all the horrors of domestic strife. The anti-slavery party in Britain must re-awaken. They have been hocussed by po litical narcotics. In the West India Islands they hold the keys of negro freedom and Africa's emancipation. They might make these isles schools for Africa. It would be better and cheaper than an armed nautical blockade of Africa to purchase the negroes as they are brought to the coast, ship them to the West Indian islands, employ them in field labour, bestow on them intellectual and industrial education, place them under the care of missionaries, cultivate, through them or the native Negroes, all the islands, and make them depots from which, in a few years, the once timid captives will be returned to the African coast, civilised farmers, Christian citizens of that great continent, who will effectually blockade the rivers, stop slave traffic, and teach the value of labourers to the chieftains, by demonstrating their power to earn all that Europe can sell from their labour. The French republic has followed the monarchy in shielding the Pope, and aiding the Propaganda. We have no wish to deprecate such just measures as France may adopt for that purpose. France, with a faith of any kind, would be better than France with frivolity. A deep strong tide of superstition would be a richer stream in France than the shallow theories that have run over the land. But French statesmen say that they are bound to be not only the propounders of the faith, but fidei milites. They want the general business of Catholicism. They keep the Pope, as Pharoali's Premier was supposed to keep a cup, wherewith to divine. M. Thiers and M. Barrot care no more for the Pope than they do for the grand lama. They hardly esteem him so highly as General Cavaignac, who described him as that "respectable person." Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, we fear, can scarcely have an estimable character in those nunneries, where vows are religiously observed. Unless in the article of absolution, these French gentlemen have little traffic of an ecclesiastical nature; and even in that case they take the matter greatly in their own hands. A human being in sacerdotal office could not contain the con- That is the way in which a mortal stab can be given fessions that they would have to whisper if they made to slavery and the slave trade. More teaching and a clean breast at regular intervals. Devout Catholics tilling, more produce, more civilization, are the chinks may not like these defenders; but although they are not in its armour. Free work will beat slave labour if much in earnest regarding religion, they desire power, justice be done; but there must be no intervention and they want to “cozen” the priesthood, who, in the || between the labourer and the planter, except such end, will prove to be the most sagacious diplomatists. intervention as everywhere can be called into force These French gentlemen say that Russia helps the between the employed and the employer. Greek Church, England the Bible Societies, and France But do the Anti-slavery men of this country now must take the Pope by the hand. We deny and re-seek the extirpation of slavery? Are they not content pudiate any fighting aid to Bible Societies from Eng-with its expulsion from our own territories? Do they land. All that they can expect is protection in their not even participate in its gains? Say they not we transactions. Britain promises only fair play within are not the Artful Dodgers, but merely the Fagans of her dominions to different religions. That is some- the profession? Are they not averse to steal, but thing widely different from those holy twenty-four-willing to be resetters of stolen goods? Because they |