VII. 1814. CHAP. find such a certain and growing vent for its fabrics as in its colonial settlements; while they will never find so sure and steady a market for their rude produce as in the wants of its inhabitants. Similarity of tastes and habits renders the fabrics and productions of the parent state more acceptable to the young one than those of foreign lands. The certainty of not having their supplies of necessaries interrupted, is an inappreciable advantage to the mother country. Their identity of interest perpetuates the union which absolute dependence on one part had at first commenced. The connection between a parent state liberally and wisely governed, and its colonies, is founded on the surest of all foundations-a real reciprocity of advantages; and, as such, may long prove durable to the great benefit of both, and retain the infant state in the bonds of allegiance, after the time has arrived when it might aspire to the honours of separate dominion. 5. What the colonial policy of the parent be. To preserve, however, this connection between the mother countries and her robust colonies, a wise and liberal system of government is indispensable. If such be not state should adopted, they will, when they have attained majority, inevitably break off on the first serious difficulties of the parent state. Nothing can permanently retain them in their allegiance but a real reciprocity of advantages, and the practical enjoyment of the powers of self-government by the colonies. The reason is, that the rule of the distant old state, if unaided by colonial representation, direct or indirect, never can be founded upon an adequate knowledge of the necessities, or attention to the interests, of the youthful settlement. It will always be directed by the ideas, and calculated for the advantage of the society with which it is surrounded - generally the very reverse, in the first instance at least, of what the young state requires. The true colonial policy, which can alone insure a lasting connection between the mother country and her transmarine descendants, requires the most difficult of all sacrifices on the part of the former-that of VII. 1814. her established prejudices and selfish interests. Yet it is CHAP. the sacrifice of her immediate advantages only; for never will the interests of the old state, in the end, be so promoted as by the most liberal and enlarged policy towards its distant offspring. What that policy should be, has been written in characters of fire on the tablets of history. It should be the exact reverse of that which lost England North, and Spain, South America. It should be the government of the colonies, not for the interest of the mother country, but for the advantage of themselvesan administration which should make them feel that they would lose rather than gain by a severance of the connection. Rule the colonies as you would wish them to rule you, if the seat of government were in the colony, and you were the distant settlement, and it will be long indeed before they will desire to become independent. This is, perhaps, the last lesson of wisdom which will be learned by the rulers of mankind; yet is it the very first precept of the religion which they all profess; and the whole secret of colonial, as indeed of all other governments, is to do to others as we would they should do unto us. 6. loss to the from the lonies. There is no idea more erroneous than that which is entertained by many in this country, that it is for the Inevitable interest of the old state to sever the connection with the parent state colonies when they have arrived at a certain degree of separation strength; because by so doing, as it is said, you retain of the cothe advantages of mercantile intercourse, and get quit of the burden of providing for defence. Experience has proved that this opinion is of all others the most fallacious; because the very first thing which a colony does when it becomes independent, is to levy heavy import duties on the manufactures of the mother country, in order to encourage its own, and thus the benefit of its rising market is at first abridged, and at length lost to the parent state. The United States of America, accordingly, have imposed an import duty of 30 per cent on all imports whatever; and the consequence is, that our average VII. 1814. CHAP. exports to them are not now so great as they were forty years ago, when their inhabitants were little more than a fourth of what they now are; and while our colonies consume, some £2, 10s., some £2, some £6 or £8 a-head of our manufactures, our emancipated offspring in North America do not, on an average of years, consume 12s. worth.* To the shipping of the parent state the change is still more disastrous, for, instead of being all on the side of one country, it becomes divided into two, of which the younger rapidly grows on its older rival. Witness the British trade to her North American colonies, with 2,600,000 of inhabitants, which employs 1,200,000 tons 1 See ante, of British shipping; while that with the United States, c. iv. $107, with their 24,000,000, employs only 1,400,000, the refigures are mainder, about double that amount, having passed into Humboldt's the hands of the Americans themselves.† And while Espagne. Spain, while she possessed her colonies,1 carried on a traffic with them equal to what England has since attained where the given. Nouvelle The great amount of the British tonnage to the United States of late years has been mainly owing to the prodigious emigration-on an average, 250,000 souls-from Great Britain to that country. Before this began, our tonnage with America stood thus: -PORTER'S Parl. Tables, vi. 43; vii. 43; iii. 50, 52, 518—–years 1839, 1840, 1841. VII. 1814. with her settlements in all parts of the world, and fleets CHAP. capable for long of maintaining an equal conflict with the mistress of the seas, since she lost them her foreign trade has sunk to nothing, and her fleet, the successor of the invincible Armada, has dwindled to two ships of the line and three frigates. * 7. rule of old Although the prosperity of the Spanish colonies had become such that they contained, when the Revolution Tyrannical severed them from old Spain, nineteen millions of inha- Spain over bitants, and carried on an export and import trade with her colonies. it of above £16,000,000 sterling in all, yet this had arisen chiefly from the bounty of nature and the resources of wealth which they themselves enjoyed, and in no degree from the government of the parent state. Its adminis-. tration had been illiberal, selfish, and oppressive in the very highest degree. It was founded mainly on three bases-1. The establishment of the Romish faith in its most bigoted form, and the absolute exclusion and refusal even of toleration to every other species of worship; 2. The exclusive enjoyment of all offices of trust and emolument in the colonies, and especially the working and direction of the mines of gold and silver, by persons appointed by the Spanish government at Madrid; 3. The entire monopoly of the whole trade with the colonies to the merchants and shipping of the mother country, especially those of Cadiz and Corunna, whom its immense profits had long elevated to the rank of merchant princes. Here the radical selfishness and shortsighted views of human nature appeared in their full deformity; and accordingly, as these were the evils which depressed the enerImports and exports of Spain to her colonies in 1809 Exports, Imports, 59,200,000 piastres, or £15,200,000 -HUMBOLDT, Nouvelle Espagne, iv. 153, 154. See also ante, c. iv. 107, where the details are given. Exports of Great Britain to her whole colonies in VII. 1814. CHAP. gies and cramped the efforts of the colonies, the prevailing feeling which produced the revolution, and the war-cry which animated its supporters, were for the opposite set of immunities. Liberation from Romish tyranny, selfgovernment, and free trade with all the world, were inscribed on the banners of Bolivar and San Martin, and in the end proved victorious in the conflict. Happy if they had known to improve their victory by moderation, and exercise the powers it had won with judgment, and if the liberated states had not fallen under a succession of tyrants of their own creation, so numerous that history has not attempted to record their succession, and so savage that it recoils from the portrait of their deeds. tures. 8. Although, too, the trade which Spain carried on with The trade of her colonies was so immense anterior to the revolution in Spain was all with Spanish America, yet we should widely err if we imaforeign manufac- gined that it consisted of the manufactures raised or worked up in Spain itself; on the contrary, it consisted almost entirely of manufactured articles produced in Holland, Flanders, Germany, and England, brought by their merchants to the vast warehouses of Cadiz and Corunna, and transported thence beyond the Atlantic. The government of Madrid was entirely swayed in these matters by the merchants of these great seaport towns; and their interest was wound up with the preservation of the monopoly of the trade, and by no means extended to the production of the manufactures. On the contrary, they were rather interested in keeping up the purchase of the articles which the colonies required from foreign states, for they enjoyed in that way in some degree a double transit, first from the seat of the manufactures in Britain or Belgium to Cadiz and Corunna, and again from thence to the American shores. Spain, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government to encourage them, had never possessed any considerable manufactures; and even if the merchants engaged in the colonial trade had wished it, they could not have found in their |