tain from another, it is robbing him of his property and perpetrating an unjustifiable tyranny. We have already shewn that these laws injure, instead of improving the character of seamen, and that two to one of the British seamen are engaged in unprotected foreign trade. It was proved before the committee that there were not above one thousand men of the royal navy who had been brought up in the merchants service. (p. 106.)

By the navigation laws there can be no trade carried on between the mother country and any of her colonies, by foreign vessels, nor between any of the colonies; nor can any goods be taken to any colony, but in vessels of the country producing the goods, or from which they are usually exported, naturalised ports included; but even this trade is limited to vessels of nations granting to England similar privileges, or that puts her ships on the footing of the most favored nation, certain free ports being declarable by orders in council. The effect is palpable, that the colonies pay higher for what they import, and get less for what they export; and this is for the benefit of the monopolist "at home," and to the injury of all others at home or in the colonies. At best, the trade so restricted must either injure the colony or the mother country, for they place themselves, (says Mr. Torrens, in his Essay on the Production of wealth, pp. 240, 285,) to a certain extent, in an artificial and precarious state, and upon any change of that condition, revulsions and derangements must succeed, and the amount of injury is the difference between the price which either pays for the products of the other over and above what they could get them at from others. But there is something more with the producer, in every country where the restrictive system operates as a tax on exchanges. The producer is doubly injured as producer and consumer, for his sales are thereby limited, whether the sales are made abroad or at home, and his profits diminished (see McGregor's Progress of America, 2d vol. 1289.) A foreign ship, for instance, cannot take a cargo from a colonial port to a foreign port, and return with a cargo from that port to the colonies. If she turns, she must come in ballast, and so lose the whole freight of that voyage, or she must return to the foreign country to which she belongs, and may from thence take a cargo back to the colony. In either case she loses one voyage, and the colony must either be supplied by the mother country,

at her own price, and with things she can sell no where else so well, or by the foreign trader, who to save himself must charge for the lost voyage; for such lost, or additional voyage must constitute part of the cost of the supplies furnished by him; and it is evident the British merchant will not sell for less than the foreign merchant, or the market compels him. For instance, says Mr. Ricardo, "a Neapolitan ship can take a cargo from New Foundland to Cadiz, but that same ship cannot go back laden to New Foundland again, unless she makes a voyage up the Mediterranean to Palermo or Naples, to obtain a freight to New Foundland." Now, it is evident, that all this must add to the price of all goods imported into New Foundland, by this indirect trade. No conjecture can approximate, says our author, the amount of trade thus diverted or prevented by such interferences with its free and natural current.

It was stated by a witness that Australia produces a quantity of copper ore and wool, for which there was a demand on the continent of Europe, but that on account of a deficiency in British vessels, the export of both was prevented, and emigration there discouraged, although a number of Hamburgh and Bremen vessels had been there, and were compelled to leave their ports without the ore or wool, though they would have been glad to have taken either, because they were prohibited by the British navigation laws; for if Hamburgh or Bremen vessels were to take the wool to Hamburgh or Bremen, and there was a surplus over the German market, they could not take that surplus over to England for sale, though ever so much in demand there, in one of their ships, because it is not the produce of the country. Besides, no colonial produce can be imported from any part of Europe into Great Britain, neither woods nor spices, sugar, tea, wool, cotton, coffee, corn, or any other thing, except gold, silver, diamonds, pearls and precious stones, either in a foreign or British vessel. Cotton, sugar, &c., may be very abundant in any town on the continent, and ever so scarce in England, yet no ship can take it there. "They are," says Mr. Ricardo, "forbidden freights alike to all; to the Frenchman and Hamburgher because they are not the produce of his country; to the Englishman, because they are the produce of a British possession, and have already got part of their way to England, and it is held to be for the good of British

ships that they must carry those goods all the way, or not at all, which no doubt, is just about as good for ships as it would be for stage coaches, if an act were passed that every passenger must be taken up at his own door, and that once carried part of his way in one coach, he must, on no account, be taken the rest of it in any other. This prohibition which is imagined to give our ships long voyages, and which, often really prevents them of a voyage applies alike to all our colonies, and does them all injury just in proportion to their extent and power of export, and the relative demand for their goods in British and foreign ports."

It is well known that there has been, of late years, a great emigration from England to Australia. It appears that Hamburgh and Bremen vessels will take passengers from Europe to Australia for less than the British, although they can take no return cargo, either to England or Hamburgh; and yet they must be compelled to charge higher than they would otherwise do, if they could take back a return cargo of wool or copper ore. All this must compel the Australians to commence the business of smelting or of the manufacture of copper; and thus while forced to manufacture an article inferior to that which might have been made better in England, the English manufacturers are injured as well as the Australians, both being sacrificed to the mistaken interest of the ship owner" at home." So of sugar, logwood and colonial wheat, they can neither be brought from the colonies to England, in a foreign ship, but the sugar may be refined and the logwood made up into furniture, and then either may be imported in the ships of the country where manufactured, and while the order of the day is protection to home industry, the protection, intended for the ship owner injures both the manufacturer and consumer at home; while it encourages the manufacturers of foreign countries, by giving them their raw materials cheaper. It is even so of cotton; it must be spun or woven on the continent before it can be taken to England, though it were selling there at a lower price than in England, and the mills of England were stopped for the want of the raw material. And if England were starving, colonial wheat could not be carried there by an European foreign ship, unless the wheat was first taken to the continent and ground into flour. In all these cases, it will be seen, that the law operates as a bounty to foreign manu

facturers by forcing the raw material on them at a lower price than if every thing was left to open competition. But to shew the inconsistency of the system, coffee is held an exception to this rule, and gains no admission by being ground.

Again, one colony may starve, whilst another has a superabundance of what is wanted.

"I was at Swan River, says a witness before the committee, in 1842-43, and there was a very great scarcity of rice. An American vessel had just discharged an assorted cargo of produce; the captain sailed without saying anything to the custom-house authorities, in search of a cargo of rice; he returned in a few weeks; but when he got back, the custom-house authorities said, 'We cannot allow you to land your rice; you came from a British colony, you must take it elsewhere." The rice was worth 3 or 4d. a pound at Swan River, and the consequence was, that the American had to sell his rice to a captain of an English vessel belonging to Sidney, to be carried on to Sidney, where that rice was not worth more than perhaps a half penny a pound, notwithstanding that the colony of Swan River was in the greatest want of this rice. And there is a case of a vessel coming down from Bombay to Columbo in Ceylon, of the same kind."

Thus the colonies have to pay higher for many articles of consumption, while they are deprived of others, and of course can sell less of their produce, and even less of British manufactures to foreigners than they could otherwise do; whereby their market is lessened and depressed. The island of Singapore, which the British own on the coast of Malacca, having been made a free port, has increased to a great extent, the sole cause of which, Mr. Ricardo tells us, was the perfect liberty given to the vessels of all nations to trade there.

The condition of Teulis Island has been this. She depends principally for her subsistence on foreign imports, being principally indian corn and wheat flour. Her export is salt. The salt being of superior excellence, much of it is consumed in the United States and in the West India islands; and while her customers abundantly produce precisely those things that she most needs, to wit, molasses, sugars and spirits from the other foreign West India islands, and provisions and lumber of all sorts from America, yet a large portion of these vessels coming for salt arrive in ballast! How different would be the condition of the island, which has as yet but 2500 inhabitants, if all

these vessels were allowed to take them articles suitable for their consumption.

"There was no need," says Mr. Ricardo, "to call evidence from every colony before the Committee; the mode of injury is the same in all. From our vast Eastern empire to Teulis Island, a speck scarce discoverable on the map, the same system of obstruction exists. Production and trade are harassed and discouraged, and the enterprise and energies of the colonists beset by difficulties and vexations."

The Colonies have been generally aroused to a sense of the injustice of their position; and some of the ablest generals now in England maintain the doctrine that it would be for the interest of both mother country and colony to abolish the restriction now placed upon the colony trade. Nothing could tend more to increase emigration to these countries, and thereby relieve the older country from a redundant population, and the condition of the emigrant would be much improved by being removed to a country redundant of food and cheap lands and needing population. It is now agreed by the most eminent writers on political economy, that Great Britain has been more benefited by the commerce of the United States, as independent States, than she would have been if they had still continued British Colonies. Memorials, petitions, and representations have been made to the British Government against the oppression of the navigation laws, from Canada, Jamaica, Ceylon, Australia and Trinidad. They all shew in what manner they are injured by these laws. Memorials from Toronto and Montreal stated, in 1846, that at Montreal and Quebec there were vast stores of bread-stuffs brought from various parts of Canada, intended for exportation, that these stores could not be taken off on account of the scarcity of British vessels suited to the conveyance, and that in consequence freight had risen fully 50 per cent. beyond the remunerating or average rate, while foreign vessels might easily have been procured from American ports to take off these stores at the moderate rates then paid between NewYork and Great Britain. In Upper Canada, a very large amount of wheat and flour had been bought, in anticipation of the high prices expected to arise from the exaggerated reports, then current, of the famine in Europe. This retention in Montreal and Quebec proved ruinous to many; and what added provocation to the injury, was the manifest injustice, that while Montreal superabounded