260 Timehri. 
situated as it is entirely within tropical latitudes and capable only of 
supplying economically the local community with its requirements as 
regards tropical products of the field, the forest and the mine. The 
colony's supplies of foodstuffs, clothing and manufactures of all kinds, 
must largely be obtained from outside sources, because they can be 
produced in the great manufacturing and industrial centres at a much 
cheaper rate than they could be produced in a small community like this ; 
and on the other hand the colony is pre-eminently adapted for the pro- 
duction of certain articles which are in demand in the large centres of 
civilisation, and which can only be produced in certain latitudes. Conse- 
quently the only sound trade policy for a country such as this to adopt 
is to send her produce to the world’s markets where the best prices can be 
obtained, and in the same way purchase the articles required for consump- 
tion which can be obtained at a cheaper rate than they can ever success- 
fully be produced in the colony. It is true that a small nation with a 
dense population when it is capable of producing its food, raw materials 
and manufactured articles within its own borders may be very prosperous 
with a very small external trade, but, as shown above, the condition is 
inapplicable to British Guiana. Its commercial prosperity is almost ex- 
clusively bound up with its foreign trade, that is, all trade not domestic. 
In this colony there is no Census of Production, no Industrial Census, 
no register of earnings, no labour statistics, no unemployment records, no 
trattic returns, no statistical abstract, &c. These would be eminently useful, 
but there is the black fact that there is no public demand for them ; and 
the Government are not concerned to undertake a service which would be 
of incalculable value alike to the statistician, the economist, and the Goy- 
ernment themselves. 
Happily the conditions are far different in the case of the colony's 
overseas trade ; and it is with a rapid review of this, extending over the 
past decade, that the present article will concern itself. The period is 
sufficiently long to allow for minor variations and to eliminate the 
unusual conditions that may characterise any particular year ; at any rate 
it is agreed on every side that a short range test of commercial trans- 
actions must in the nature of things be untrustworthy. It is not difficult to 
account for trade fluctuations even in socomparatively smnall a community as 
ours with its almost stationary population. There are such purely incidental 
circumstances, as, on the one hand, the advent of new commercial agents, 
the action of consignors, the shifting of consumption from one article to 
another, which is accepted as a substitute in consequence of a reduced 
price, &e., and on the other hand, the withdrawal temporarily or other- 
wise, of consignors, the allowing of stocks to run down at certain times 
of the year, the rise in the prices in the supplying markets and over- 
consigninents. But there are other causes, among which mention may 
be made of seasons, tiscal arrangements, and the conditions of competition 
brought about not alone by the foreign carpet-bagger, but also by those 
who abridge distances, as well as by those who promote intercourse by 
bringing the city nearer the country by the simple expedient of establish- 
