[ 490 ] [May, 
OUR COLONIES. 
Tuer is an old German proverb which says, “ The very best shoe- 
ties in the world are those which you cut out of another man’s leather ;” 
and the English Government, in the conduct which it has of late thought 
fit to adopt towards the colonies, seems to have taken this venerable 
axiom as the ground-work of their policy. Nay, they are not only bent 
upon indulging their own caprices at the expense of those countries, but 
they permit every body else who wants shoe-ties to cut them out of 
the colonies’ leather—and, what is worse, to cut them of any fashion 
they like. Now, if the wealth, or the power, or the prosperity of this 
country were in no degree involved in the welfare of those distant pos- 
sessions of the crown, the matter would be perhaps of little importance 
in a political point of view. The violating a series of pledges, some 
tacit, but confirmed by the unvarying practice of many years; some 
ratified by all the solemnity of legal enactments, and all of them binding 
in conscience, and in honour—the interfering with private property— 
the reducing an orderly, and well-conducted, and virtuous community 
to beggary and degradation, would be reprehensible and disgusting to 
the very last degree ; but as these are matters wholly beneath the con- 
templation of the professors of liberal notions—the new-light governors 
of England—they might pass: the victims would have to endure their 
undeserved sorrows and agonies, pitied by some, and neglected by the great 
majority of their countrymen ; but the liberal system would flourish, the 
theorists would triumph—and if the nation were not content with such 
glories, it must be hard indeed to please. The case, however, is not quite 
as we have supposed it—the colonies are a source of great pecuniary — 
advantage to this country. It would seem hardly necessary to state a 
fact which ought to be so well known, so universally felt, but that the — 
recent treatment they have experienced would induce the belief that it 
has been forgotten. They yield a royal revenue, they furnish annual 
employment for thousands of tons of British shipping, they spread the 
strength and power of this country to the most remote quarters of the 
globe. These are the advantages which concern immediately the nation ; 
and the nation may, if it will, dispense with them. There is, besides, a 
sum amounting to many millions of British capital, invested in those 
countries: this the nation must reimburse, if it can, to the owners; but — 
until it does so, it ought to keep its hands from their property, and to | 
forbear to deprive them of the fruits of their mdustry and enterprize. 
It is because these facts, and the principles of common honesty—to _ 
say nothing of political sagacity—have been lost sight of, that’a state of — 
things pregnant with danger has been brought about. The position — 
in which this country stands towards her colonies, is at this moment a 
matter of very deep and painful interest. The seeds of discontent—we 
hope not of disaffection—are sown in all of them; in some thé growth 
is more forward than in others; but in all, unless measures, in every 
respect different from those which have lately been pursued, shall be — 
speedily resorted to, a bitter harvest of cost, and disappointment, ant 
humiliation, must be reaped. Canada breathes discontent, and on 
feather more thrown into the scale of her wrongs will raise the expres-— 
sion to an indignant remonstrance—while the elements within her lie 
ready to assist that apt disposition she cannot but have to relieve herse 
The fiscal regulations of Grenada, of Trinidad, and of Honduras, have 
