THE TRADE OF PLYMOUTH. 379 
Tie Lae Dw OF oY MOUTH: 
BY MR. W. F. COLLIER. 
(Read March 28th, 1878.) 
Tir Trade and Industries of Plymouth are as much the effects 
and results of natural forces and laws, as the tides, the rivers, and 
the geographical and geological conformations which are the prin- 
cipal features of this fine and beautiful harbour. In fact the same 
forces which have so formed the coast as to give us this grand port, 
physical forces as every one will pronounce them to be, may also 
be said to have caused the trade and the industries which man has 
followed within its precincts under the influence of moral or 
mental forces. 
I have placed the trade and industries of Plymouth in the order 
named in relation to one another because I regard Plymouth as a 
trading port, and not an industrial or producing centre. The 
industries and the trade are of course the principal features in the 
economy of a nation, and are subject to economical laws; though 
it may be well to remark in passing that economical laws, whether 
they may be deemed to have been discovered or not, many of those 
propounded being questioned and disputed, are never operative by 
themselves, but are always operative in conjunction with other 
social laws, which modify, alter, pervert, and sometimes entirely 
negative them. Still, they exist, and exert an influence of their 
own in all our social actions and feelings, however heroic may be 
our aspirations, however dismal we may call the science that arises 
from the investigation of those social forces, which result in one 
man living on fifteen shillings a week and another spending fifteen 
thousand pounds a year, each of them imagining that a little more- 
would make him contented. 
The productive power of a nation may be divided into two great 
classes—the industries (applying the term to productive industry), 
and the trade. .They are very different operations, though without 
