388 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
2nd. Export trade. Terms which always imply trade with 
countries outside Great Britain and Ireland. 
8rd. Coasting trade; which implies trade by sea within Great 
Britain and Ireland. 
4th. Inland trade; a term which speaks for itself. 
5th. Internal or town trade; which consists of our dealings 
with one another inside what we may consider to be 
our own boundaries. 
6th. Shipping trade. 
The import trade of Plymouth may be ranked as the principal 
trade of the port, and is the natural consequence of the facilities 
of access to the rest of the world offered by the harbour. It isa 
very antient trade here indeed, and has varied in its character with 
the ever-varying circumstances which have succeeded one another 
from age to age. As we have now only to consider the state of 
the trade as we find it, I-will limit the period to which it will be 
necessary to call the attention of the Institution to the last twenty 
years, more or less. 
I shall be obliged to throw some figures at the heads of my 
hearers. This is in itself a figure of speech, but it is a very apt 
one. It is as well to throw stones at one’s head as figures, for the 
one does not create more confusion than the other if due care is not 
taken with the figures that they may convey some idea beyond 
themselves. So many thousands, or so many millions, have no 
value in themselves, and only tend to confusion unless a significance 
is given them by comparison, by making them relatively high or 
relatively low. It has been said that nothing is so misleading as 
facts except figures, and I believe that saying is strictly true, unless 
the facts and the figures are used with due consideration for that 
quality which is known as the relativity of the human understand- 
ing. I do not expect however to find a scientific institution, as 
this is, impatient of figures that are necessary to the subject before 
them. 
I have mentioned the Custom House and its officers in an earlier 
part of this paper, referring to an earlier state of the trade of 
Plymouth, in unfavourable terms. I have here to make amends 
by saying that as the Custom House and its officers now perform 
their functions, they are of the greatest possible value to commerce 
by supplying most important statistics, arranged and classified in a 
