L.1,375,000

As nearly, therefore, as may be, foreign trade costs the country twice as
much as colonial. Such are the conclusions, the rough but approximately
accurate conclusions, to which the _new_ facts of Mr Cobden and the old
hobby of Joseph Hume, mounted by the _new_ philosopher, have led; and the
public exposition of which has been provoked by his ignorance or
malevolence, or both. In order to gain less than 9 per cent average upon a
foreign trade of thirty-five millions, the country is saddled, for the
benefit of Messrs Brookes and Cobden, _inter alios_, with a cost of nearly
13 per cent upon the same amount; whilst the cost of colonial trade is
about 18-3/4 per cent on the total of sixteen millions, but the profit
nearly fifteen per cent. In the account of colonial profit, be it observed,
moreover, no account is here taken of the supplementary advantage derived
from the differential duties against foreign imports.

In the national point of view, the profitableness of the foreign export
trade, as compared with colonial, would seem more dubious still, when the
values left and distributed among the producing classes are taken into
calculation. Of the total foreign exports of thirty-five millions,
considerably above one-fifth--say, to the value of nearly seven and a half
millions sterling--were exported in the shape of cotton, linen, and
woollen yarns in 1840, the year selected by Mr Cobden, of which, in cotton
yarn alone, to the value of nearly 6,200,000. According to _Burn's
Commercial Glance for_ 1842, the average price of cotton-yarn so exported,
exceeds by some 50 per cent the average price of the cotton from which
made. Applying the same rule to linen yarn as made from foreign imported
flax, and to woollen yarn as partly, at least, from foreign wool, we come
to a gross sum of about L.3,750,000 left in the country, as values
representing the wages of labour, and the profits of manufacturing capital
in respect of yarn. The quantity of yarn, on the contrary, exported
colonially, does not reach to one-sixteenth of the total colonial exports.
In order to manifest the immense superiority nationally of a colonial
export trade in finished products, over a foreign trade in _quasi_ raw
materials, we need only take the article of "apparel." Of the total value
of wearing apparel exported in 1840, say for L.1,208,000, the colonial
trade alone absorbed the best part of one million. Now, it may be
est