as according to mere general theories of government, resort to which appears to me, in our present situano better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore avor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the material of these circumstances in as full and as a manner as I am able to state them. e first thing that we have to consider with regard e nature of the object is the number of people in Colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal ains on that point. I can by no calculation justify elf in placing the number below two millions of inCants of our own European blood and color, besides ast five hundred thousand others, who form no inconable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. - Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is ccasion to exaggerate where plain truth is of so much ht and importance. But whether I put the present bers too high or too low is a matter of little moment. I is the strength with which population shoots in part of the world, that, state the numbers as high e will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in erating on the mode of governing two millions, we find we have millions more to manage. Your childo not grow faster from infancy to manhood than spread from families to communities, and from ges to nations. I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable 5 to such an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of those minima which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; not a paltry excrescence of the state; not a mean dependant, who may be neglected with little damage and provoked with little 10 danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be 15 assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity. But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your Colonies 20 is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of their commerce indeed has been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distinguished person at your bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five years-it is so long since he first appeared 25 at the same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain has come again before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time, than that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition which even then marked him as one of the first literary characters 30 of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating experience. Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any detail, if a great part of the members 35 who now fill the House had not the misfortune to be propose to take the different from his. absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I matter at periods of time somewhat There is, if I mistake not, a point of 5 view from whence, if you will look at the subject, it is impossible that it should not make an impression upon you. I have in my hand two accounts; one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its Colonies, as 10 it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the export trade of this country to its Colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the Colonies included) in the year 1704. 15 They are from good vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's office, which has been ever since his time so abundant a source of Parliamentary information. The export trade to the Colonies consists of three great branches: the African-which, terminating almost wholly in the Colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce,—the West Indian, and the North American. All these are so interwoven that the attempt to 25 separate them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole; and, if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, one trade. 20 30 The trade to the Colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus: Exports to North America and the West Indies. £483,265 £6. From five hundred and odd thousand, it has six millions. It has increased no less than tw This is the state of the Colony trade as compa itself at these two periods within this centur this is matter for meditation. But this is not amine my second account. See how the export the Colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other view; that is, as compared to the whole trade of in 1704: : The whole export trade of England, including £6. 6, The trade with America alone is now within £500,000 of being equal to what this great co nation, England, carried on at the beginning of tury with the whole world! If I had taken th year of those on your table, it would rather ceeded. But, it will be said, is not this Americ an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn t from the rest of the body? The reverse. very food that has nourished every other part present magnitude. Our general trade has been augmented, and augmented more or less in almo part to which it ever extended; but with this difference, that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the Colony trade was but one-twelfth part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) consider5 ably more than a third of the whole. This is the relative proportion of the importance of the Colonies at these two periods; and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis; or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical. 10 Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend 15 from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord 20 Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quæ sit potuit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing 25 the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision that when in the fourth generation the third Prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation which, 39 by the happy issue of moderate and healing counsels, was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family 35 with a new one - if, amidst these bright and happy |