advantages attending the
possession or retention of colonies is made exclusively to hinge, with a
narrow-mindedness incapable of appreciating the other high political and
social interests, the moral and religious considerations, moreover,
involved--we shall now proceed with the task of arbitrating and striking
the balance. If that balance should little correspond with the bold and
unscrupulous allegations of Mr Cobden--if it should be found to derogate
from the assumed super-eminence of the foreign trading interest over the
colonial, let it be remembered that the invidious discussion was not
raised by us, nor by any member of the Legislature who can rightfully be
classed as the representative of great national and constitutional
principles; that the distinction and disjunction of interests, both
national, with the absurd attempt unduly to elevate the one by unjustly
depreciating the other, is the work of the League alone, which, having
originated the senseless cry of "class interests," would seem doggedly
determined to establish the fact, _per fas et nefas_, as the means of
funding and perpetuating class divisions.

In our last number, we left Mr Cobden's sum
total of army expenditure for colonial
account charged by him, at L.4,500,000

Reduced by deductions for military and other
stations, maintained for the protection
and promotion of foreign trade, for the
suppression of slave dealing, and as penal
colonies, in the total amount of-- 1,550,000
----------
To apparent colonial charge, -- L.2,950,000

We have, however, to reform this statement, so far as Mr Cobden's basis
upon which founded. Accustomed to his blunders undesigned and mistatements
intentional as we are, it is not always easy to ascertain their extent at
the moment. Thus, the army estimates for 1843, amounting to L.6,225,000 in
the whole, as he states, include a charge of, say about L.2,300,000 for
"half-pay, pensions, superannuations, &c.," for upwards of 80,000 officers
and men. This fact it suited his convenience to overlook. Now, of this
number of men it is not perhaps too much to assume, that more than
one-half consists of the noble wreck and remainder of those magnificent
armies led to victory by the illustrious Wellington, but certainly not in
the colonies, and the present cost of half-pay and invaliding not
therefore chargeabl