1831.] Sir Henry Par ncll on " Financial Reform," %c. 297 



mother country on capital employed in the Colonies can hardly be 

 doubted. " When capital is employed in England/' says Sir Henry, 

 " for instance, on manufactures, it pays English workmen, instead of 

 buying clothes and food for slaves ; it employs agents, clerks and ma- 

 nagers, it employs ships and sailors to import raw materials, and to 

 export the finished goods. The incomes derived by West India pro- 

 prietors from profits on their capital are spent like incomes derived 

 from rent, and add nothing to the national wealth ; but the profits 

 made on capital employed in trades at home are added to capital, and 

 thus promote the constant accumulation of it." All this may be very 

 plausible, but at the same time it is evidently fallacious; Sir Henry 

 entirely overlooks one point, namely that before any profit can be 

 obtained, goods must find purchasers ; in so far, therefore, as the West 

 India proprietors are purchasers of clothes and food for their negroes, 

 the profits go to augment the capital of the manufacturer and agricul- 

 turist at home ; and incomes, derived from rent, especially rent from 

 abroad, certainly go on, in the same way, to augment British capital. 



" It is clear, therefore, that on the whole/' says this financial refor- 

 mer ; "the public derives no commercial advantage from the Colonies, 

 which it might not have without them." We think it clear that the 

 very reverse is the fact ! " They do not," says he, "even afford any 

 advantage, as some persons suppose, by enlarging the field for the 

 employment of capital. The capital which supplies commodities for the 

 colonies, would still prepare commodities, if the colonies ceased to pur- 

 chase them : and these commodities would find consumers for every 

 country contains within itself a market for all it can produce !!" 



What egregious fools the manufacturers of Great Britain and Ireland 

 must be to hazard their goods, in every quarter of the globe in search 

 of a market, while this cf country contains within itself a market for all 

 it can produce I !" It would be a waste of time to adduce facts to shew 

 the gross absurdity of such assertions. 



It is stated that there are still means enough for employing capital at 

 home ; and that if new means were wanted, they would be more effec- 

 tually obtained by removing restrictions on trade and revising the 

 taxes, than by increasing the productions of the coloniesor, in other 

 words, free trade and revision of taxes is the panacea for all our evils ! 



" The history of the colonies for many years is that of a series of 

 loss, and of the destruction of capital ; and if to the many millions of 

 private capital which have been thus wasted, were added some hundred 

 millions that have been raised by British taxes, and spent on account 

 of the Colonies the total loss to the British public of wealth which 

 the Colonies have occasioned, would appear to be quite erroneous." If 

 Sir Henry means to apply this reasoning, in part or whole to our 

 West-India possessions, we do not hesitate to say that it is a monstrous 

 misrepresentation of the case ! that it was her transatlantic colonies 

 that first advanced Great Britain to her present rank amongst commer- 

 cial nations ; and that her sugar colonies have, annually, for a long 

 series of years, poured immense wealth into the mother country 

 adding to her general prosperity to her amount of capital stock, and, 

 at the same time, promoting to an incalculable extent, her general 

 prosperity. 



In his eulogium upon the prosperity of Cuba which prosperity he 

 attributes entirely to principles of free-trade he keeps entirely out of 



M.M. New Scries. VOL. XI. No. 63. 2 Q 



