known as a trading nation. With unrivalled natural advantages, with a population half as numerous again as our own, and equal in ingenuity, energy, and perseverance to any race of people on the face of the earth, with raw materials obtained on the spot, with iron and coal in abundance, and with food cheap and good, she only exports 15,353,200l. worth of manufactured goods, while we export 180,500,000l. worth. We can send 3,000 miles across the sea for her raw cotton for our artisans to work up, and for her corn, beef, and bacon to feed them on while they are doing it; and when it is manufactured into piece goods we can send it back again 3,000 or 4,000 miles, and sell it to every country surrounding the nation from which we got the raw material and the food. It is only by imposing heavy duties that they can keep us out of their own territory, and even then they cannot prevent us from selling some of our goods to the very people who grew the material from which we made them. Outside their own boundaries, where they cease to be propped up by duties, they are not in the race with us. The following are the amounts of the exports of Great Britain and the United States to the five divisions of the globe for the year 1878 as given by themselves' (excluding the trade between the two countries) : Africa Asia. Exports from the United States. Exports from Dollars 59,503,000 226,590,000 140,100,000 104,611,000 556,554,000 1,087,358,000 Where are the States as an exporting nation in the neutral markets of Africa, Asia, and Australasia? To those three divisions of the globe they send 23,758,040 dols. (4,751,6087.) worth of goods of all kinds, while we send 390,704,000 dols. (78,140,8007.) worth! Even to the peoples of North and South America-at their very doors our exports are one half more than theirs, and theirs are mainly food. The following are the amounts of the exports of the United Kingdom and the United States of a few principal manufactured goods, both taken from the official returns of the respective Governments; the United Kingdom for the year ending the 31st of December, 1880, and the United States for the year ending the 30th of June, 1880; the amount of the United States exports reduced to pounds sterling to facilitate comparison. Report upon the Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Countries for the year 1879. Published 1880. 2 To Europe the United States exports are almost entirely food and raw materials. In all other It is only in clocks and watches that they approach us. manufactured goods their exports are but a drop in the bucket of the world's trade when compared with ours. America has marvellous facilities for producing that which many countries are compelled to buy, viz. food. Her vast extent of territory enables her to give grants of land on nominal terms to any one who will cultivate it. Land cheap and a full demand for its produce attract emigrants from Europe. Every industrious adult emigrant is a loss to the country he leaves, and a gain to the country he goes to. In the one the cost of rearing and training him has been incurred, but the benefit of his labour when it becomes profitable is not received; in the other the benefit is received without the cost being incurred. Europe annually presents to America emigrants who are worth to her hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Consequently if America cannot flourish no nation can, and the only thing likely to retard her progress is her foolish fiscal policy. What has Protection done for France? She has had to pass through depression as we have, and her export returns show that she has suffered more. The following table of the value of her exports of her principal manufactured goods during the years 1873, 1876, and 1879 tell their own tale. They indicate a falling off far more serious than our manufacturers have experienced. And those who are troubled about the growth of our imports will do well to note that French imports have also increased at the following rate : £139,912,000 So that the French tariff, protective as it is, does not prevent a decrease in exports when all the world is depressed, nor the flow of goods into the country from other parts. Those who buy must sell, and those who sell must buy. There is no getting away from that in international trade. From 1873 to 1877 all countries were seriously depressed,3 and none more so than the United States. Yet no nation recovered more rapidly than they did. Their speedy recovery and our prolonged depression were mainly the results of causes over which fiscal policy can have no control. They have enjoyed plentiful harvests; we have suffered from deficient ones. The increased wealth produced by their soil counteracted their losses in other ways and tided them over their depression speedily. The falling off in our agricultural produce increased our losses and intensified our difficulties. Further, our necessity was their opportunity. Our scarcity increased the value of their plenty by making us larger customers for their food. The prosperity of a nation depends largely, if not entirely, on its natural advantages and the extent to which its people avail themselves of them. Until recently our insular position, our supplies of coal and iron, and our climate have been advantages which have been unrivalled, and our people availed themselves of them with energy, ingenuity, and judgment enough to place them at the head of the commercial world. Now the United States are demonstrating that in some respects their natural advantages are equal to our own, and in others superior, and they are developing them with a determination to make the most of them. Other nations are also awaking to the fact that if they cannot equal or surpass us they can do more than they have done. Under such conditions it is not surprising that competition is keen and the struggle for supremacy severe. But surely it is no reason why we should turn our backs on the policy under which we have achieved and are achieving so much. If it be our fate at some future day to yield the palm to our cousins across the Atlantic, let us not hasten the time by tying our hands or crippling our power. We cannot afford to live within ourselves. Englishmen cannot live at their present rate on the trade they could do with one another. We must continue to supply others with manufactured The Hon. William M. Evarts, Secretary of State to the Washington Government, in his Annual Report dated May 1, 1880, spoke of the universal depression which had prevailed during the previous five years.' goods. To do that the cost of production must be kept down. must have cheap food, and cheap clothing, and cheap raw materials. The cheapest markets in the world must be open to us to buy in, and that means Free Trade on our part whatever others may do. Our preparation for the struggle which will grow closer and keener must therefore be no 'retrograde movement. It must be progress-progress in sobriety, in industry, in education, in ingenuity, and in freedom. With a sober and industrious people, educated and trained as a wealthy nation like ours ought to train them; with every encouragement and facility for invention and such laws affecting the sale and tenure of land as shall enable it to be put upon a sound commercial footing, Old England has a great and prosperous future THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. No. LVII.-NOVEMBER 1881. DESPAIR. A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. A man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man is rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned. I. Is it you, that preach'd in the chapel there looking over the sand? Follow'd us too that night, and dogg'd us, and drew me to land? II. What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell? Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued |