of the Empire to which I know they are proud to belong. (Cheers.) I think it quite necessary and useful to call attention to this fact; I do so in as few words as possible, and it is not necessary to enforce the importance of such an announcement as that; it is one which increases enormously the power-and I will use the word prestige, though many people object to such a term, it is an expressive one-and it increases the prestige of the Empire, and I am glad to read it. (Applause.)

The PRESIDENT then called upon the Honorary Secretary, in the absence, through indisposition, of its author, Dr. J. Forbes Watson, Director of the India Museum, to read the following paper on

THE CHARACTER OF THE COLONIAL AND INDIAN TRADE OF ENGLAND CONTRASTED WITH HER FOREIGN TRADE.

*

Two years ago I had occasion to compare the trade carried on between the United Kingdom and the British possessions with that between the United Kingdom and foreign countries. The results of that comparison were published at the time, the figures then given being those for 1874. Desirous of ascertaining to what extent the conclusions then formed would be borne out by later statistics, I recently examined the Trade Returns for 1876, the last ones published, and was struck not only by the large relative increase of that portion of our trade which is carried on with our own possessions, but also by the evidences afforded of the peculiarly advantageous nature of that trade. Our Colonial trade, in fact, is distinguished from our foreign trade by certain characteristics which considerably enhance the degree of importance it already possesses on account of its magnitude. It is the purpose of the present paper to endeavour to throw some light on these special characteristics: and I here wish to state that in the course of this investigation I have derived a large amount of most valuable assistance from Mr. Stanislas Prus Szczepanowski-to whom I am the more indebted as the pressure of other work at the present time would have left me without the necessary leisure for the working out of the multifarious details of so complicated a subject as this one has proved itself to be.

In the following observations I shall leave out of consideration the earlier history of the progress of our Colonial Trade. This subject has already been exhaustively dealt with in the elaborate papers by Mr. G. T. Danson and Mr. Archibald Hamilton, pub

*On the Establishment of an Imperial Museum for India and the Colonies. London, 1876.

lished in the Statistical Society's Journal for November, 1849, and March, 1872, respectively, as also in those read before this Institute by Mr. Strangways and others. The period of eight years from 1869 to 1876 is, therefore, the one to which I propose to direct attention. But before proceeding further, it may be well to give here a brief view of the principal divisions of our Colonial Empire, and then to indicate the reasons which make it expedient to select the year 1869 as the standard of comparison.

In the following table (p. 111) will be found the principal data referring to the trade and population of the different Colonies, which have been grouped as follows:—

(a) Trading and military stations, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malta.

(b) Plantation Colonies, such as the West Indies, Ceylon, and Mauritius.

(c) Agricultural, pastoral, and mining Colonies, such as Australia, Canada, and the Cape.

This table was worked out two years ago on the basis of the returns for 1874. As it is quoted here solely with the view of illustrating the striking differences in the functions, so to speak, of each of these three groups of Colonies, the figures for that year will answer the purpose; nor would the results have been materially affected by the substitution of later figures. These results may be thus briefly summarised:

Taking first the last named but most important group of Colonies, viz. the Agricultural, Pastoral, and Mining Colonies, we find that they contain a European population of above six millions, and that their trade with England amounts per head of the European population to £38 in the case of the Cape, £18 in the case of Australia, and £6 in the case of the North American Colonies.

The extent of the commercial relations with England which these figures imply, may be best gathered from the fact that the corresponding figure for the English trade with the United States -the foreign country which has the most extensive commercial relations with England-would be £2 5s. per head, or not much more than one-third of that for Canada, about one-seventh of that for Australia, and about one-fifteenth of that which shows the trade with England of a colonist at the Cape.

In the case of the Cape, however, the estimated amount of trade for each white inhabitant is naturally greater than that for Australia and Canada, from the fact that the Cape contains a

TABLE SHOWING THE POPULATION AND TRADE OF THE COLONIES.

considerable native population, which helps to increase its producing and consuming power.

In the case of the Plantation Colonies, in which the number of European settlers is altogether insignificant as compared with the native population, the trade per white inhabitant ranges still higher, amounting to £310 of total trade, and to £165 of English trade. Although in the case of these Colonies the bulk of the imports is consumed by the native population, and the bulk of the exports produced by native labour, the practice of estimating the trade per head of the white inhabitants only is justified by the consideration that but for the capital and enterprise of the European planters, the bulk of the trade would probably not have existed.

In the case of the Trading stations, the few European residents are only the intermediaries of a trade carried on, in reality, not with the population of the Colony, but with the adjacent foreign countries, and in this case the numbers for each white inhabitant rise to £10,000 of total trade, and to £2,000 of English trade.

The principal data for each class of Colonies are recapitulated in the following tabular form :

In a view of the trade of the whole of the British possessions, the Indian trade must be included with that of the Colonies proper. A few years ago such a course might have required some special justification, India being then often considered as standing quite apart from the Colonies, and having few or no bonds of common interest uniting her with them, but the generous sympathy which in the past year Australia has shown for the famine-stricken populations of Southern India, affords conclusive proof that our colonists, as well as the people of England, recognise that all parts of the British Empire are one in feeling and in interests.

India, moreover, partakes to a considerable extent of the character of the two first classes of Colonies. Assam, the Nilgiris, the Himalayan valleys, and parts of the Gangetic valley, are as truly plantation Colonies as Mauritius or Demerara. European planters, assisted by a native population, raise there crops of indigo, tea, coffee, and chinchona in exactly the same manner as sugar is raised in Mauritius, or coffee in Ceylon. Bombay and Calcutta moreover, are European trading stations, quite analogous to Hong Kong and Singapore. It is even within the bounds of possibility that India may in a limited degree acquire also the characteristics of the last-named class of Colonies, and become in the future the home of real European communities. In placing, therefore, the Indian trade on the same footing as that of the Colonies, one is guided not only by sentiment, but also by indisputable analogy.

The period of eight years which has been selected for comparison, just marks the beginning and the end of that period of extraordinary inflation of trade which followed the Franco-German War. The year 1869 presents in every way many analogies with that of 1876. Both were years of depression, subsequent upon years of great excitement. The year which followed 1869 witnessed the beginning of a wonderful development of trade; and probably that which followed 1876 would, but for the political complications in the East, have been likewise marked by a recovering trade. The years 1869 and 1876 were also both pre-eminently normal years, in which trade depended more upon the permanent economical conditions of the world than upon any accidental circumstances. There is also this advantage, that, with the exception of the heavy fall in the value of cotton, the general level of prices is very similar in the two years, so that a comparison of the values alone may also be taken as representing approximately the relative bulk of trade done in the two years.

In the trade returns for the year 1876, the first circumstance which attracts attention is that India stands ahead of every other country as the one which absorbed the largest quantity of British produce and merchandise, whereas in 1869 it only occupied the third rank, both the United States and Germany coming before it. Another interesting fact is, that in 1876 for the first time, the British exports to Australia exceeded those to the United States, although the population of the latter exceeds that of Australia almost twenty-fold. In that year the exports to Australia amounted to £17,700,000 in value, while to the States they only amounted to £16,100,000.

These two facts at once point to the change which has taken