The President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Ritchie, made
a speech at the annual meeting of the Croydon Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, in which he dwelt on the recent great increase in our trade. The average volume of our trade in the quinquennial period 1.994.9S was, he said, £725,600,000, while this year it would be EMS,900,00u, an increase of £73,300,000, or 10 per cent. The figures of oar railway traffic showed an increase of 23,269,000, while the number of the unemployed had sunk from 4-4 per cent. in September, 1898, to 2-4 in 1899. Britain is prosperous, in fact, on every side,—an admission which comes the better from Mr. Ritchie because he was once a Fair-trader, and still seems to believe that exports can exceed imports. Does he fancy that we give away our goods ? Such prosperity is most irritating to the Continent, even including the Germans, who have just been informed by official statistics that their trade with the whole of their colonies amounts to £738.000
sterling, while the subsidies to the colonies amount to £739,400, thus actually exceeding not only the profit of colonial commerce, but its whole volume. It would be cheaper to distribute the money, and resign the colonies.
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