402 THE BRITISH ISLES. 



But whilst English merchants allow no opportunity to escape them for securing 

 new markets for the products of British industry, whether amongst the savages 

 of Polynesia or the nncultured negroes of Inner Africa, they find themselves 

 shutout, hy high protective duties, from the ports of many civilised nations which 

 formerly were amongst their best customers. Nor are the British colonies the 

 last in seeking to foster a native industry at the expense of that of the mother 

 country.* Rival nations, which look up to England as their instructress in the pro- 

 cesses of manufacture, have gained in experience and strength, and now compete 

 with her in the open markets of the world. The balance of trade represented by the 

 value between exports and imports has recently turned so much against England 

 as to cause some anxiety. t 



But it is clear that this difference cannot represent so much loss to the national 

 capital, and must be m.ade up from other sources. One of these is supplied by the 

 dividends earned by English capital invested in foreign Government loans and 

 industrial undertakings. There is hardly a country in the world which is not 

 indebted to English enterprise and English capital for railways, telegraphs, and 

 water works, or for a development of its industrial and commercial resources. 

 Nearly all the submarine telegraph cables belong to England ; the mines of Brazil, 

 the railways of the Argentine Republic, and many of the sugar-mills of Egypt are 

 the property of English capitalists. The material labour of half the world is 

 carried on through the counting-houses of the City, and in the banks in Lombard 

 Street the- profits resulting from this immense activity keep accumulating. The 

 annual income which England derives from her investments in foreign countries 

 cannot be much less than £30, 000,000. Î 



English capitalists are aware, however, that the profits derived from manufac- 

 tures may diminish in course of time, or disappear altogether, and they have con- 

 sequently spared no effort to become the ocean carriers of the entire world. The 

 profits yielded by the shipping trade do not figure in the statements of exports and 

 imports, but they are very considerable. Britain owns about half the mercantile 



* From the following stiitcmcnt of British exports it will be seen that their value in the case of 



France has increased 186 per cent, since the conclusion of a commercial treaty in 1861, whilst the 



exports to the United States, notwithstanding the increase of population, are now less than they were in 



1860, and those to British America have fallen immensely since the adoption of protective duties : — 



British North 

 France. United States. 



1850 



1855 



1860 



186.5 



1870 



1875 



1879 



+ Excess of total imports ove 

 185Ô .... 



1860 .... 



1865 .... 



i Robert Giffen, " Recent Accumulations of Capital in England," estimates the total capital of the 

 United Kingdom at £6,113,000,000 in 1865, and at £8,018,000,000 in 1875, being an increase of 40 per 

 cent, in ten vears. 



