We now come to his naval cost of colonies, with a margin for ordnance as well. On this head, Mr Cobden remarks, with much sagacity—and, for once, Mr Cobden states one fact in which we may agree with him:—"But the colonies had no ships to form a navy. The mother country had to send them ships to guard their territories, which were not paid for by the colonies, but out of the taxation of this country. The navy estimates for this year amounted to L.6,322,000. He had no means of ascertaining what proportion of this large amount was required for their colonies; but a very large proportion of it was taken for the navy in their colonies. The ordnance estimate was L.1,849,142, a large share of which was required for their colonial expenditure. The House would find, that from the lowest estimate, from L.5,000,000 to L.6,000,000 out of the taxes of this country were required for maintaining their colonial army and navy." True it is, the colonies have no ships of war; true, the navy expenses count for the gigantic sum stated—in the estimates at least, and estimates seldom fall short, however budgets may; true, also, that ordnance is the heavy item represented. And we also are without the means for any, not to say accurate, but fair approximative estimate of the proportion of this expenditure which may be incurred for, and duly chargeable against the colonies. In the case of the army, as we have shown, the possession and facilities of reference to documents, enabled us to resolve Mr Cobden's bill of totals, in one line, into the elements of which composed, to classify the items under distinct heads, and so to detect the errors, and redress the balance of his own account. The authorities, of official origin mostly, to which we had recourse, were equally open to Cobden, had he been actuated by an anxious desire to arrive at the truth, earnest in his enquiries after the means of information, laborious in his investigations, and, beyond all, with honesty of purpose resolved nothing to withhold, nor aught to set down in malice, as the result of his researches. Unfortunately, the navy is not a stationary body, as the army may be said to be; squadrons are not fixtures like corps in garrison; here to-day and gone to morrow. The naval strength on the various stations, never permanent, escapes calculation, as the due apportionment of expenditure between each, and again of the quotas corresponding to the colonies or to foreign commerce alone, defies any approach to accurate analysis. But we have at least common observation and common sense to satisfy us that but a small proportion of the naval outlay can be justly laid to colonial account, because so unimportant a proportion of the naval armament afloat, can be required for colonial service or defence. We have, assuredly, a certain number of gun-boats and schooners on the Canadian lakes, which are purely for colonial purposes; and we may have some half-a-dozen vessels of war prowling about the St Lawrence and the British American waters, which may range under the colonial category. Wherever else our eyes be cast, it would be difficult to find one colony, east or west, which can be said to need, or gratuitously to be favoured with, a naval force for protection. We have a naval station at Halifax chargeable colonially. We have also a naval station, with headquarters at Jamaica, but certainly that forms no part of a colonial appendage. The whole of the force on that station is employed either in cruizing after slavers, and assisting to put down the slave trade, or it is hovering about the shores of the Spanish Main and the Gulf of Mexico, for the protection of British foreign commerce, for redressing the wrongs to British subjects and interests in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, or Hayti, or for conveying foreign specie and bullion from those countries for the behoof of British merchants at home. We have a naval station at the Cape of Good Hope, with the maintenance of which, that colony, Australia, New Zealand, &c., may be partly debited. And we have a naval station in India, the expense of which, so far as required for that great colonial empire, is, we believe, borne entirely by India herself. But by far the largest proportion of the expense is incurred, as the great bulk of the force is destined, for the protection of foreign commerce in the Indian and Chinese seas.
If we are to seek where the British navy is really to be found and heard of in masses, we have only to voyage to Brazil, where whole squadrons divide their occupations betwixt coursing slavers and waiting upon foreign commerce. Further south, we find the River Plate blocked up with British war ships, watching over the interests of British commerce, and interposing betwixt the lives and properties of thousands of British subjects, and the unslaked thirst of the daggers of Rosas and his sanguinary Mas-horcas, that Ægis flag before which the most fearless and ferocious have quailed, and quail yet. So also, rounding Cape Horn, traversing the vast waters of the Great Pacific, the British ensign may ever be met, and swarming, too, on those west and northwestern coasts of Spanish America, where, as from Bolivia to California, war and anarchy eternal seem to reign. Assuredly, no colonial interests, and as little do political combinations, carry to those far off regions, and there keep, such large detachments of the British fleet. Nearer home we need not signalize the Mediterranean and Levant, where British navies range as if hereditary owners of those seas nor the western coasts of Spain, along which duly cruise our men-of-war, keeping watch and ward; certainly in neither one case nor the other for colonial objects.
From this sweep over the seas, it may readily be gathered how comparatively insignificant the proportion in which the British colonies are amenable for the cost of the British navy; and, on the contrary, how large the cost incurred for the guardianship of the foreign commerce of Great Britain. In the absence of those authentic data which would warrant the construction of approximate estimates, we are willing, however, as before, to accept the basis of Mr Cobden's—not calculations, but—rough guesses; and as the colonial share of army, navy, and ordnance estimates altogether, he taxes in "from five to six millions," of which four and a half millions, according to a previous statement of his, were for the army alone, we arrive at the simple fact, that the navy and ordnance are rated rather widely at a cost ranging from half a million to one million and a half sterling per annum. The mean term of this would be three quarters of a million; but truth may afford to be liberal, and so we throw in the other quarter, and debit the colonies with one million sterling for naval service, which, so far as isolated sections of the great body political, they can hardly be said, with exceptions noted before, either to receive or need. We have before, and we believe conclusively, disposed of Mr Cobden's colonial army estimates; and now we arrive at the total burden, under the weight of which the empire staggers on colonial account.
Army charge, L.1,950,000, but say L.2,000,000
Navy and Ordnance, 1,000,000
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Total to Colonial debit, L.3,000,000
Mr Cobden enumerates a variety of expenditure against the colonies besides, under the head of civil establishments, public works, and grants for educational and religious purposes. We need not—there is no occasion to discuss these minutiæ with him; we prefer to make him a bargain at once, and so we throw in, against these civil contingencies for the colonies, the whole lump of the estimates for the diplomatic and consular service, Dr Bowring's commissionerships inclusive; all the charges for civil government, education, religion, public works, &c., besides of those stations, such as Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Isles, Singapore, Penang, &c., occupied altogether, or chiefly, for the purposes of foreign commerce, partially from political views, but assuredly not at all with reference to colonial objects. If he be not content with this bargain of a set-off, we are quite ready to call over the account with him at any time, crediting him not more liberally than justly besides, with all the prodigal waste imposed upon the country by the colonial imposture facetiously styled the "self-supporting system," in his smart exposure of which our sympathies are all with him, zealous advocates though we be of colonization, of colonization on a national scale moreover, and therefore on a national and commensurate scale of expenditure; which, however, can only be undertaken by the government when the fiat of financial insolvency which, with the Exchequer bill fraud, was the last legacy of Mr Spring Rice and Lord Monteagle, shall be superseded, and the Treasury rehabilitated, and then only by slow degrees, but sure. An individual may, perchance, thrive upon an imposture, a government never; the late Ministry are the living evidence of the truth. We can comprehend "self-supporting colonization" in the individual sense of the pioneers and backwoodsmen of the United States; in the "squatting" upon wild lands in Canada and the West Indies; in the settlement of isolated adventurers among the savages of New Zealand; but the "self-supporting" settlement of communities, or, as more fancifully expressed, of "society in frame," is just as sound in principle, and as possible in practice, as would be the calculation of the Canadian shipwright, who should nail together a mass of boards and logs as a leviathan lumber ship for the transport of timber, on the calculation that at the end of the voyage it would be rated A1 at Lloyd's, or grow into the solid power and capacity of a first-rate Indiaman, or man-of-war. We all know that such timber floaters went to wreck in the first gale on our coasts; the crews, indeed, did not always perish, they were only tossed about at the mercy of the winds and waves with the wooden lumber which would not sink, so long as hunger and helplessness did not disable hands and limbs from holding fast. And just so with the "self-supporting system of colonization."
Having ascertained, upon bases laid down by Mr Cobden himself, but without adopting his slashing unproved totals, the extent to which colonial trade is criminally accessory to the financial burdens of the United Kingdom, (not, by the way, of the empire of which they form a component part,) it behoves us now to establish the proportion in which we are taxed for foreign trade, for there is clearly more than one vulture preying upon the vitals of this unhappy land.
We established, in our September number, an army cost of about L.1,200,000 against foreign trade for Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Islands, Singapore, Penang, &c. We may add, as a very low valuation, in the absence of accounts, L.250,000 more for the war with China. Of the estimates for the navy, L.6,322,000, and ordnance, L.1,849,000—total, L.8,175,000;—we are fully entitled to charge about three-eighths to foreign commerce, or say L.3,000,000. The numerous and extensive naval stations kept up for the protection of our foreign commerce exclusively, together with the Mediterranean, Levant, and Spanish coast naval expenditure, to no inconsiderable extent for the same object, will sufficiently justify this estimate. We have apportioned one million of the naval and ordnance estimates for colonial purposes; one million more may be safely placed to the account of the slave trade; the remainder, L.3,175,000, is certainly an ample allowance for home naval stations, Channel fleet, if there be any, Mediterranean and other naval armaments, so far as for political objects only. We remain, therefore, for foreign trade with—
Garrisons, Gibraltar, &c., and reliefs at home, L.1,200,000
War with China, 250,000
Navy and Ordnance, 3,000,000
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Total cost of foreign trade, L.4,450,000
Id. colonial, as before stated, 3,000,000
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Excess foreign, L.1,450,000
This excess might justly be swelled to at least half a million more by a surcharge of army expenditure in China; of navy expenditure on foreign stations, that for China is not taken into account at all; and in respect of various other items of smaller consideration, separately, although in the aggregate of consideration, the account might still more be aggravated. There would be some difficulty, it must be allowed, in clearly disinvolving them from masses of general statements, although for an approximate valuation it might not amount to an impossibility; we prefer, however, to leave Mr Cobden in possession of all the advantages we cannot make a clear title to. The advantages, indeed, are of dubious title, and something of the same kind as the entry into a house of which the owner cannot be found, or of which he cannot lay his hands on the title-deeds.
We have now disposed of the preposterous exaggerations of the anti-colonial school, so far as that school can be said to be represented by Mr Alderman Cobden, under the head of colonial cost to the metropolitan state. We have reduced his amount of that cost to its fair approximate proportions, item by item, of gross charge, so far as we are enabled by those parliamentary or colonial documents, possessing the character of official or quasi-official origin. We have necessarily followed up this portion of our vindication of the colonies from unjust aspersions by a concurrent enquiry into the cost at which our foreign trade is carried on, in the national sense of the military, naval, and other establishments required and kept up for its protection and encouragement. And, finally, we have struck the balance between the two, the results of which are already before the public.