302 .SYRIA; ITS IMPOIITA*XCK TO GREAT BRITAIN. 



dencies, as these houses, by studying and cultivating the taste and ca- 

 pabilities of the markets, and directly importing from home the ar- 

 ticles necessary for their supply, as well as by this direct importation 

 diminishing their prices to the consumer, by obviating the additional 

 charges of land-carriage, double freight, interest, labour, and com- 

 mission, that the obvious and necessary consequence of such re-* 

 ductions will be an increased demand and consumption. Again, a 

 new opening, at present engrossed by the French and Auslrians, 

 will be found for the employment of our shipping in the Mediter- 

 ranean ; while the requisite protection to our commercial interests in 

 those parts has been afforded by our government by the appointment 

 of a consul-general in Syria a measure that alone was wanting to 

 rapidly develop our commercial relations with those valuable regions. 

 It is, indeed, lamentable to reflect how long and how much our com- 

 merce with Asiatic Turkey has been neglected, solely from the ab- 

 sence of a consular establishment ; while our European rivals have 

 been securing to themselves a market which is just as open to us 

 from the Mediterranean, and much more accessible to us from India 

 by the Persian and Arabian Gulfs. In fact, in Syria we shall find 

 a large population of producers and consumers large, wealthy, and 

 luxurious cities a country full of valuable equivalents a demand 

 for the manufactures of Europe, and the productions of our East 

 India possessions ; for, we believe, we may lay it down as a commer- 

 cial axiom, when no insurmountable obstacles exist, that where there 

 is a rich, commercial, and enterprising city, with a population of 

 150,000 souls, the manufactures of this country ought to be advan- 

 tageously introduced. Syria contains two such cities, with popula- 

 tions exceeding that number ; in which, strange to relate, from the 

 want of the necessary encouragement and protection on the part of our 

 government till very lately, there did not exist a single British esta- 

 blishment. But a new era has dawned upon our commercial horizon ; 

 and, we doubt not that the enterprise of our merchants will eagerly 

 avail themselves of a field so eminently calculated to neutralize the 

 commercial stagnation of trade, that is at the present moment so pa- 

 ralyzing the energies of this country. 



