absolutely expend it for nothing: nay, indeed, in some cases to achieve a loss. All profitable trade with colonies will come without the outlay of a penny for colonial administration-must flow to us naturally; and whatever trade will not flow to us naturally, is not profitable, but the reverse. If a given settlement deals solely with us, it does so from one of two causes: either we make the articles its inhabitants consume at a lower rate than any other nation, or we oblige its inhabitants to buy those articles from us, though they might obtain them for less elsewhere. Manifestly, if we can undersell other producers, we should still exclusively supply its markets were the settlement independent. If we cannot undersell them, it is equally certain that we are indirectly injuring ourselves and the settlers too; for, as M'Culloch says:"Each country has some natural or acquired capabilities that enable her to carry on certain branches of industry more advantageously than any one else. But the fact of a country being undersold in the markets of her colonies, shows conclusively that, instead of having any superiority, she labours under a disadvantage, as compared with others, in the production of the peculiar articles in demand in them. And hence, in providing a forced market in the colonies for articles that we should not otherwise be able to dispose of, we really engage a portion of the capital and labour of the country in a less advantageous channel than that into which it would naturally have flowed." And if, to the injury we do ourselves by manufacturing goods which we could more economically buy, is added the injury we suffer in pacifying the colonists, by purchasing from them commodities obtainable on better terms elsewhere, we have before us the twofold loss which these much-coveted monopolies entail.

Thus are we again taught how worthy of all reverence are the injunctions of equity, and how universal is their applicability. Just that commercial intercourse with colonies which may be had without breaking these injunctions, brings gain,

while just that commercial intercourse which cannot be so had, brings loss.

Passing from home interests to colonial interests, we still meet nothing but evil results. It is a prettily sounding expression, that of mother-country protection, but a very delusive one. If we are to believe those who have known the thing rather than the name, there is but little of the maternal about it. In the Declaration of American Independence we have a candid statement of experience on this point. Speaking of the king-the personification of the parent State-the settlers say:

"He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their sub

stance.

"He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation:

"For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. "For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

"For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. "For imposing taxes upon us without our consent. "For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury," &c., &c., &c.

Now, though tyrannies so atrocious as these do not commonly disgrace colonial legislation in the present day, we have but to glance over the newspapers published in our foreign possessions, to see that the arbitrary rule of the Colonial Office is no blessing. Two outbreaks in fifteen

years pretty plainly hint the feeling of the Canadas. Within the same period the Cape Boers have revolted thrice; and we have just had a tumultuous agitation and a violent paper war about convicts. In the West Indies there is universal discontent. Jamaica advices tell of stopped supplies, and State-machinery at a dead lock. Guiana sends like news. Here are quarrels about retrenchment; there, insurrectionary riots; and anger is everywhere. The name of Ceylon calls to mind the insolence of a titled governor on the one side, and on the other the bitterness of insulted colonists. In the Australian settlements, criminal immigration has been the sore subject; while from New Zealand there come protests against official despotism. All winds bring the same tale of a negligence caring for no expostulations, impertinence without end, blunderings, disputes, delays, corruption. Canadians complain of having been induced by a proffered privilege to sink their capital in flour-mills, which subsequent legislation made useless. With an ever-varying amount of protection, sugar-planters say they do not know what to be at. South Africa bears witness to a mismanagement that at one time. makes enemies of the Griquas, and at another entails a Kaffir war. The emigrants of New Zealand lament over a seat of government absurdly chosen, money thrown away upon useless roads, and needful works left undone. South Australia is made bankrupt by its governor's extravagance; lands are apportioned so as to barbarize the settlers by dispersion; and labourers are sent out in excess, and left to beg. Our Chinese trade gets endangered by the insulting behaviour of military officers to the natives; and the authorities of Labuan make their first settlement in a pestilential swamp.

Nevertheless, these results of mother-country protection need not surprise us, if we consider by whom the duties of maternity are discharged. Dotted here and there over the Earth, at distances varying from one thousand to fourteen thousand miles, and to and from some of which it takes threequarters of a year to send a question and get back an answer,

are forty-six communities, consisting of different races, placed in different circumstances. And the affairs of these numerous, far-removed communities-their commercial, social, political, and religious interests, are to be cared for-by whom? By six functionaries and their twenty-three clerks, sitting at desks in Downing Street! being at the rate of 0·13 of a functionary and half a clerk to each settlement !

Great, however, as are the evils entailed by government colonization upon both parent State and settlers, they look insignificant when compared with those it inflicts on the aborigines of the conquered countries. The people of Java believe that the souls of Europeans pass at death into the bodies of tigers; and it is related of a Hispaniolan chief that he hoped not to go to heaven when he heard there would be Spaniards there. Significant facts these: darkly suggestive of many an unrecorded horror. But they hint nothing worse than history tells of. Whether we think of the extinct WestIndian tribes, who were worked to death in mines; or of the Cape Hottentots, whose masters punished them by shooting small shot into their legs; or of those nine thousand Chinese whom the Dutch massacred one morning in Batavia; or of the Arabs lately suffocated in the caves of Dahra by the French; we do but call to mind solitary samples of the treatment commonly received by subjugated races from so-called Christian nations. Should any one flatter himself that we English are guiltless of such barbarities, he may soon be shamed by a narrative of our doings in the East. The Anglo-Indians of the last century-"birds of prey and of passage," as they were styled by Burke-showed themselves only a shade less cruel than their prototypes of Peru and Mexico. Imagine how black must have been their deeds, when even the Directors of the Company admitted that "the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country." Conceive the atrocious state

of society described by Vansittart, who tells us that the English compelled the natives to buy or sell at just what rates they pleased, on pain of flogging or confinement. Judge to what a pass things must have come when, in describing a journey, Warren Hasting says, "most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach." A cold-blooded treachery was the established policy of the authorities. Princes were betrayed into war with each other; and one of them having been helped to overcome his antagonist, was then himself dethroned for some alleged misdemeanor. Always some muddied stream was at hand as a pretext for official wolves. Dependent chiefs holding coveted lands were impoverished by exorbitant demands for tribute; and their ultimate inability to meet these demands was construed into a treasonable offence, punished by deposition. Even down to our own day kindred iniquities are continued.* Down to our own day, too, are continued the grievous saltmonopoly, and the pitiless taxation which wrings from the poor ryots nearly half the produce of the soil. Down to our own day continues the cunning despotism which uses native soldiers to maintain and extend native subjection—a despotism under which, not many years since, a regiment of sepoys was deliberately massacred for refusing to march without proper clothing, Down to our own day the police authorities league with wealthy scamps, and allow the machinery of the law to be used for purposes of extortion. Down to our own

day, so-called gentlemen will ride their elephants through the crops of impoverished peasants; and will supply themselves with provisions from the native villages without pay ing for them. And down to our own day, it is common with the people in the interior to run into the woods at sight of a European!

No one can fail to see that these cruelties, these treacheries, these deeds of blood and rapine, for which European nations

* See Sir Alexander Burns' despatches.