Having disposed of Mr Cobden according to Cocker, in reference to his arithmetical demonstrations of the superiority in point of pounds, shillings, and pence value of one sort of trade over another, we may notice some petty trickery, cunningly intended on his part, consisting in the suppression of figures and facts on the one side, and their aggregation on the other, &c., by way of bolstering up unfairly a rotten case. He states the whole colonial trade at £.16,000,000 only, inclusive of British India, whereas Porter's Tables, which he must have consulted, give the total exports of Great Britain to all the world for 1840,
at £.51,406,430 Of which colonial, 17,378,550 ——————- Remaining for foreign trade, £.34,027,880
Mr Cobden knew well, however, that Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Isles are not, and cannot be considered as, colonies. They are in fact military stations held for political and commercial objects. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the rock of Gibraltar, with a population of 15,000 souls, should consume of British imports alone £.1,111,176, the value actually entered for that port in 1840. That amount should be accounted as to the credit of foreign export trade, and so Mr Cobden reckoned it, without, however, drawing the distinction, as he should have done. But that would have exposed the miserable chicanery of the double dealing he had in hand; for whilst taking credit for the exports to Gibraltar as part and parcel of foreign trade, he proceeded, by way of doubly weighing the balance, to charge all the civil and military expenditure of the garrison and fortress against colonial trade, so that he treated Gibraltar as a colony in respect of its cost, and as a foreign country in respect of its trade. Cunning Isaac! here we have his military arithmetic:—"Upon the 1st of January in this year, their army numbered 88,000 rank and file. They had abroad, exclusive of India, 44,589. So that more than one half of that army was stationed in their colonies; and as it was stated by the noble lord the member for Tiverton in his evidence, for every 10,000 of these soldiers that they had in the colonies, 5000 were wanted in England for the purpose of exchange and recruiting. So that not only one-half, but actually three-fourths of the army were devoted to the colonies. The army estimates this year amounted to £.6,225,000, the portion of which sum for the colonies amounted to £.4,500,000." Now, as the garrison of Gibraltar alone consists of about 4000 men, to which add 2000 as the proportion for the reserve in England for recruiting and exchanges, it follows that of the 44,500 men on colonial duty, to which add the reserve in England, 22,250, one-eleventh are stationed in and wanted for Gibraltar alone, the charge of which to be rateably deducted from the whole sum of £.4,500,000, falsely set down as incurred for the colonies, would be about £.410,000. If to this sum be added £.275,000 for "new works in Gibraltar," as stated by Mr Cobden himself from the estimates—ordnance expenditure, (1000 guns,) £.25,000 only—share of navy estimates, £.50,000 only—we have a gross sum of above three quarters of a million sterling as the cost of a fortress whose sole utility, in peace or in war, is the favour and protection of foreign trade—of the trade of the Mediterranean, of which it is the key; and the nation is saddled with this cost for, among others, the special behoof of that economical and disinterested patriot Mr Cobden himself, who trades to the shores laved by the waters of that sea, the Levant and the Dardanelles, if not the Black Sea. Why, Gibraltar alone, with its 15,000 of population, is more than double the charge of Canada with its million of people, one-half just emerged out of a state of rebellion, if not quasi rebellious yet. So with Malta, its garrison of about 3000 men; and, besides, a naval squadron for protection, that island being the headquarters of the Mediterranean fleet—a fleet and a station exclusively kept up for the protection of foreign trade, if for any purpose at all. And so also with the Ionian Islands, garrisoned with 3300 troops. Taking the garrison forces of Malta and these islands at 6000 men only, with the reserve in England of 3000 more, making altogether 9000, the rateable share of expense, according to the calculation of Mr Cobden, for the whole army, would be about £640,000. Add to this sum the estimate of £410,000 for the garrison alone of Gibraltar, and we have the gross sum of £1,050,000 for the three dependencies of Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands, under the head of those army estimates, amounting to £4,500,000, which Mr Cobden veraciously charges to the account of the colonies. We purposely leave out of question for the present the consideration of the other heavy charges in naval armaments, ordnance, &c., to which this country is subjected for the same possessions, because we have still to deduct other portions of the army expenditure set down as for colonial account—that is, as the penalty paid for keeping colonies; whereas a foreign trade of thirty-four or thirty-five millions, costs the country nothing at all, according to the numeration tables of Mr Cobden, and therefore should be all profit.
Passing from Europe, we come to Austral-Asia, where Great Britain, among others, possesses no less than three penal colonies. It will not be contended that New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and Norfolk Island, were established either with economically trading or political objects; that, in point of fact, they were established in any other sense than as metropolitan prisons, for the safe keeping, punishment, and moral reclamation and reform of those quasi incorrigible offenders, those criminal pests, by which the health of society was distempered, and its safety endangered in the parent state. Therefore, whatever the military or other expenditure incurred, it must be as much an obligation in its supreme or corporate capacities upon the state benefited, as the support of the criminal jurisdiction at home in all its ramifications, from the chief judges of the land down to the lowest turnkey at Newgate. We need not stop to enquire in what proportion the manufacturing system, with the immoral schools of radicalism, irreligionism, and Anti-corn-Law Cobdenism, have contributed to people the penal settlements, and, pro tanto, to aggrieve the national treasury. Certain it is, and a truth which will not be questioned, that by far the largest share of that criminal refuse has been cast off by and from the manufacturing districts; and of which, therefore, the colonial trade portion indirectly contributed should be rateably the minimum, as compared with foreign trade. In his Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire, Mr Montgomery Martin remarks of New South Wales, that "it should be observed that a large part of the military force is required to guard the prisoners." Let us take the number of troops so employed at 2600, which will not be far from the mark, the corresponding home reserve of which will be 1300 more, and we then arrive, with the help of Mr Cobden's arithmetic, and starting from his own fixed datum of total charge, at a sum, in round numbers, of £265,000 army expenditure for the three penal colonies; the more considerable proportion of which must at least be set down as arising indirectly from foreign trade, and certainly far the least from colonial, so far as chargeable upon either.
We have next, taking Mr Cobden's rule of practice, about £.50,000 actual military expenditure in St Helena, to which add reserve in England, and a total of about £.70,000 is arrived at; which cannot be placed to colonial account as for colonial purposes, since the island is purely a military and refreshment station for vessels en route for China, India, and the seas circumflowing; and foreign trade, therefore, as much concerned in the guilt of its expense as colonial traffic. The amount of charge, therefore, although remaining to be deducted from the colonial head, may be left as a neutral indeterminate item. But the military expenses for Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, about £.80,000, cannot be for colonial account at all, because stations merely for carrying on foreign trade, against which chargeable, with the civil establishments as well, whether in whole or in part, paid by the East India Company or not.
Returning westward, we have the Bay of Honduras with a military establishment, including reserve as per Cobden, expending about £.50,000, which ranges for the far greater part within the category of the cost attending foreign trade. Then, on the West African slave-trading coast, we have Sierra Leone, with a military expenditure, actual and contingent, of about £.25,000. There are the Cape Coast Castle, Acera, Fernando Po, and other small African settlements besides, which cannot cost less, in military occupation, than some few thousands a-year, say only £.10,000, all for foreign trade, since colonization and production are nil; and with Sierra Leone, they are only kept, or were established, for the purpose of suppressing the trade in slaves, and promoting a foreign trade in that quarter of Africa. Coming to Europe we have Heligoland, a rock in the North Sea, which, as only costing something more than £.1000 per annum on foreign trade account, we may leave out of question. Now, without pretending on the present occasion to make up and offer an approximate estimate of the proportion of army expenditure charged against the colonies by Mr Cobden, which should be set down either to political account, as arising from the possession and maintenance of outposts necessary for defensive or defensively aggressive purposes, in case of, or for the prevention of foreign war, or for the protection and encouragement of foreign trade, in which a right large portion of the military expenditure for Jamaica, Nova Scotia, the Bahamas, Bermuda, &c., may be regarded, we shall content ourselves with reducing his wholesale estimate of colonial army charge by the materials antecedently furnished. The reductions will stand thus, premising that in respect of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, we have not the means of ascertaining what proportion of the charge falls upon the national treasury, as part is borne by the East India Company. Of one fact there can, however, be no doubt; namely, that nearly the whole of that charge is incurred for the support and maintenance of foreign trade, just in or about the same degree as the charges for Gibraltar.
Gibraltar, army estimate, £.410,000 Malta, Ionian Islands, 640,000 New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, Norfolk Island, 265,000 St Helena, 70,000 Singapore, Penang, &c., 80,000 Honduras, 50,000 Sierra Leone, Cape Coast, &c., 35,000 ————— £1,550,000 ————— Deducting this amount from Mr Cobden's colonial estimates of 4,500,000 ————— £2,950,000
This discount of about 35 per cent at one "fell swoop" from an audaciously mendacious account-current, would be deemed sufficiently liberal if dealing with other than the "measureless liars" of the League; it is far, however, from the whole sum which will be charged upon, and proved against them, on occasion hereafter when the general question shall be progressed with. The rogues that fleeced the simple stripling, Lord Huntingtower, out of 95 per cent for his bills, were not, as shall be proved, more unscrupulous cheats and abusers of individual, than the League are of public faith.
But the discount of Cobden's Cocker veracity here established, with which for the present we shall conclude, is far (enormous, almost incredible though it be) from the full measure of his intrepidity in the "art of misrepresentation;" crediting him, as upon fair consideration we are bound, with misrepresenting to some extent from sheer ignorance, from want of that early mental training, or maturer discipline, which alone can qualify for the severe labour of researches into, and the analysation of truth. For, unfortunately for the question he has raised, although not so far entertained by the legislature, the very figures discounted from his colonial fictions tell against, and must be carried over to the debit of, his highly cherished foreign trade account, the cost of which to the country will be approximately verified on another occasion in Blackwood. It is the distinctive mishap of the family of the Wrongheads, the illiterate, one-idea'd class of which he is a member, that they never can contemplate a friendly act without perpetrating mischief, nor intend mischief without unconsciously achieving discomfiture and disgrace. For of the £.1,550,000 colonial overcharge in military expenditure alone of this shallow, unreflecting, and superficial person, not less certainly than £1,200,000 must be charged to the account of foreign trade, the special trade he delights to honour. It will constitute, as he will find, a material item in the general balance-sheet which we purpose to draw hereafter between the advantages of foreign and colonial trade.
Sir Robert Peel is not more correct in his so bitterly reproached "do-nothing" policy about Irish repeal, than in his "do-nothing" emphatic policy about Corn-law repeal. No man better knows how, left to themselves, the Brights and Cobdens will turn out to be Marplots. The dolts cannot see, that however hard the Villierses, and such as them, bid for popularity against them, in apparently the same cause—they have an interest diametrically adverse in the general sense, and on the fitting opportunity will throw them overboard. The most influential part of the liberal press, both metropolitan and provincial, it is well understood, concur with the League to some extent in its avowed objects, without at all liking its leaders, or the means pursued for the end sought, and wait only for the occasion, which will come, for damaging and finally overthrowing them in popular estimation. In Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, that is, in the privately known sentiments of the leading press and other liberal leaders of opinion in each, it is notorious that this feeling and occult determination prevails. Mr Cobden himself, and some of his colleagues, are not unaware of the fact, and have, in the factious and political sense, latterly trimmed their course accordingly. But, notwithstanding, confidence they have recovered not—never will, because apostacy or trimming cannot inspire confidence; they are endured—to be used, and to be laid aside, "steeped in Lethe" and forgotten, as in time they will be.