Tons.
At 2,578,862
Of which foreign trade, in the export of products
and manufactures to the value of _thirty-five
millions_ sterling, absorbed 1,258,000

Colonial trade in the transport of _sixteen
millions_ only of values, 1,113,000

Considering the greater mass of values transported,
the foreign trade should have employed, to have
kept its relative shipping proportion and
importance with colonial trade, above 2,400,000

We are, however, entirely satisfied, and it would admit of easy proof,
were time and space equally at our disposal for the elaborate development
of details, not only that the colonial trade gives occupation to an equal,
but to a larger proportion of registered British shipping than the foreign
trade. But we have been obliged to limit ourselves to the consideration of
such facts as are most readily accessible, so as to enable the general
reader to test at once the approximative fidelity of the vindication we
present, and the falsehood, scarcely glozed over with a coating of
plausibility, of the vague generalities strung together as a case against
the colonies by Mr Cobden and the anti-colonial faction. We have, moreover,
to request the reader to observe, that we have proceeded all along on the
basis of the wild assumptions of Mr Cobden's own self created and
unexplained calculations; that by his own figures we have tried and
convicted his own conclusions of monstrous exaggeration, and ignorant, if
not wilful, deception. The three fourths charge of army expenditure upon
the colonies, is a mere mischievous fabrication of his own brain. In
ordinary circumstances the colonial charge would not enter for more than
half that amount; and even with the extraordinary expenditure rendered
necessary by Gosford and Durham misrule in Canada, the colonial charge is
not equal to the amount so wantonly asserted. We have likewise not
insisted with sufficient force, and at suitable length of evidence, upon
the fact of the infinitely greater values proportionally left in the
country, in the shape of the wages of labour, and the profits upon
capital, by colonial than by foreign trade. It would not, however, be too
much to assume, and indeed the proposition is almost self-evident, that
whereas about 150 per cent may be taken as the average improved value of
the