1828.] [ 259 ] 



COLONIAL POLICY MR. HUSKISSON'S COLONIAL TRADE BILL, 1825. 



AMONG the features which have marked the commercial policy of the 

 principal states of modern Europe, perhaps none has stood so promi- 

 nently forward as that of colonial dominion. Indeed, with them appears 

 to have originated the idea of making commercial policy at all a motive 

 to the establishment of colonies. The Grecian colonies were only the 

 receptacles of the superabundant population of the parent city, or the 

 honourable asylum of those who, in the lottery of political struggle, had 

 drawn the blanks : while those of Rome were no more than garrisons to 

 conquered provinces or settlements, with which an usurping aristocracy 

 contrived to bribe the people into acquiescence with its violation of the 

 Agrarian law. In neither does the prospect of commercial benefit appear 

 to have entered, in the remotest degree, into their establishment. But 

 even with the founders of this modern policy, the description of advan- 

 tage which it was proposed to derive from it, has undergone considerable 

 variation since its original institution. It was in the midst of the vul- 

 gar delusion that the wealth of a nation depended upon the quantity of 

 its gold, that the enterprise of the Spanish, Portuguese, and English 

 navigators first led to the discovery of countries, in which the supply of 

 that metal was supposed to be inexhaustible. But while the discovery 

 of these new regions was presenting one vast but untenanted El Dorado 

 to the imagination of mankind, their thirst for gold quickly prompted 

 them to its possession ; and even at a somewhat later period, when this 

 absurd notion had given birth to what was called the " mercantile sys- 

 tem," one of the arguments which were held conclusive to the coloniza- 

 tion of India by the English East- India Company was the tendency of 

 their trading to increase the amount of the precious metals at home. 

 Whether, warned of the fatal results of this error by the gilded poverty 

 of Spain and Portugal, or whether perhaps the more probable solution 

 in consequence of the diminishing supply of gold which the colonies 

 were producing the people of the mother countries began, after a 

 while, to seek other sources of profit from their possessions; and in the 

 wants of the colonists for the manufactures of the parent states, the latter 

 flattered themselves they had discovered abundant harvests of gain: 

 though, as the result of their dealings, the mother country must neces- 

 sarily have become possessed of the produce of its colonies, the principal 

 advantage proposed to be derived from them was encouragement to its 

 own manufactures ; and an English legislator of high celebrity actually 

 pronounced the only use of colonies to be the monopoly of their consump- 

 tion and the carriage of their goods. 



The monopoly of supply became accordingly the grand object of 

 colonial legislation ; and of this exclusive companies contrived, in some 

 instances, the usurpation ; and, in all, the restriction upon the colonists 

 was the agency by which it was accomplished. Down to a very late 

 period, this has continued almost the exclusive object of regulation; and 

 though, as far as the British colonies are concerned, Mr. Huskisson's 

 recent measures, for opening their ports to the importations of all 

 nations, is a direct abandonment of it, yet the provision with which his 

 bill is fettered, for subjecting foreign goods to " such moderate duties 

 as may be found sufficient for the fair protection of British productions 



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