COLONIES, THEIR COST AND PROFIT.
Ma. COBDEN has stepped out of his legitimate avocation, as a Free Trade agitator, to be an Anti-Colonial agitator. Probably, in the course of his statistical researches he has met pretty often with the item " Colonies," or the like ; and he thinks that he has learned to understand them enough for his threatened motion about the cost and trade of our Colonial possessions. Something that he said
at an Anti-Corn-law meeting this week augurs indifferently for the effect he is likely to produce. The Colonies, he says, cost us,
6,000,0001., while the trade with them is worth no more than 12,000,0001.; which, he reckons, is as if a person who received a shilling were to throw away sixpence of it. Here we have to deal
with no nice calculations, and therefore we will not stop to scruti- nize the figures. Assuming them to be right, then, he knows but little of the matter—nothing of its real substance—who thinks the question of the value of colonies to this nation thus summarily settled. It is necessary to see what are the elements of the cost of colonies, and by whom borne ; what is the profit, and to whom ac- cruing: Mr. COBDEN'S figures embrace but a small fraction under both heads.
But first it should be ascertained, what are colonies and what are not. Some included in the Colonial Estimates, though costly enough, are not colonies at all—Malta, for instance, and the rock of Gibraltar. Those places are mere military and naval stations for maintaining the greatness of England on the seas ; and they have no more to do with colonies than Portsmouth or Woolwich have.
The elements in the cost of colonies may be classed under three principal heads,—the outlay for founding, the cost of governing, and the charge of maintaining the people. According to the new plan of colonization, the outlay for founding a colony does not fall on the state, or only a very small part of it does so : it is defrayed by the landowners and the individual emigrants. Emigration, the chief item under this head, is paid, in the case of Canada, by the emigrants themselves ; in the case of the Australian Colonies, by the landowner, the purchase- money of land being devoted to the purpose. The charge of government is borne in chief part by the colonists, by means of a revenue raised in the ordinary way. But government is of two kinds,—that which is necessary for the sake of the governed, and that which is added for the sake of the go- vernment itself. Now, the Colonies would not require any great expense for the due performance of the government-functions ne- cessary to them, as we see in the ease of very great colonies that have the management of their own affairs. But the English Go- vernment chooses to keep up in the Colonies a government which resembles itself in costliness, partly for the credit of the thing, partly because certain acts performed by Colonial Governments are done in behalf, not of the Colonies, but of the Mother-country. Of this kind are all matters connected with the custody of pri- soners in Australia—too much of which is actually paid for by the colonists—the maintenance of military stations at the Cape of Good Hope or New Brunswick, the collection of Imperial duties for the regulation of trade, and the like expensive proceedings, which the colonists never would undertake for themselves. This head of expense, however, is the one usually meant when people talk about the cost of colonies : they mean, not the cost of colonies, but of colonial government. It is the one, too, most beyond the control of colonists ; in fact, it is almost entirely under the control of the Colonial Office, who arrange the civil lists, appoint the go- vernors, and shield them from the consequences of their errors. Thus, South Australia and New Zealand only became expensive to this country from the cost of their governments: New Zealand, especially, has not itself cost the country a farthing. Not the Colonies, but the Colonial Office, it is that cost us so many mil- lions ; and that cost is no real set-off against the value of the Colo- nial trade.
The cost of maintaining the colonists—on whom does that fall ? The population of the Colonies is about three millions ; or, ex- cluding all who are not strictly of British origin, about two mil- lions and a half: the British people consists of two millions and a half more than are contained in the British Islands. Could they be subsisted at home ? would they not now be added to the million and a quarter of paupers—the cream of the unemployed ? The cost of their subsistence is gained to the country by their being placed in the colonies ; and as they mostly live well, the gain is great : if it were only 201. a head, it would be 50,000,0001. More- over, does not the contemned Colonial trade support many here who would otherwise be paupers ? and if so, can the gain, in these times of trouble and tribulation, be estimated by the mere money gain ? But Mr. COBDEN'S argument is capable of an odd application. If the value of a country is to be estimated by the proportion be- tween the cost of its government and its external trade, what be- comes of the United Kingdom? The value of the imports into the United Kingdom of foreign and colonial produce exceeds fifty millions ; the value of the exports of British produce are the same ; the two values together make up about a hundred millions : no ingenuity on earth could make out two hundred millions of value in our gross external trade : the cost of this country to itself, in public expenditure is about 50,000,0001., in local taxation about as much more : so that where it gets a shilling by its external trade, it throws away, not sixpence, but the whole shilling, in government- expenses. The legitimate conclusion must be, that this country is worth nothing to itself!
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