Home Politics, Or, the Growth of Trade Considered in Its Relation to Labour, Pauperism & Emigration (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1870 Excerpt: ... 19 CHAPTER H. THE GROWTH OF TRADE. It has been asserted that the evidence already deducible from our export trade points to the existence of a series of special causes influencing and developing its growth. The question now before us is to understand clearly in what they consist, and how and under what circumstances they have come into play. In order that the point may be distinctly understood, it will be wise for us to take some special year from which all comparisons shall be made; for that purpose the year 1840 has been selected, it being previous to the development of Free Trade doctrines; and, as the comparison will be carried on up to the present year, 1869, we shall have before us the whole range of figures and events on which our present commercial policy is founded. To obtain a clear conception of a subject, it may be necessary, at times, to analyse it carefully into its component parts. In applying this course to the question before us, we find that our exports from 1840 to 1868 show a growth of about 128 millions: our exports in 1840 being 51,406,430, and our exports in 1868 being 179,463,644. The questions then arise, --how have our exports grown; to what countries have they gone; and what special causes can we trace by which their growth has been accelerated or retarded. As a broad statement of the case, the increase of our exports has been mainly in those sent to France, Holland, Hanse Towns, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Japan, California, the United States, Australia, India and China; and the growth in the exports to these respective countries is more or less directly coincident with certain special causes that came into play at the time their trade was developed. For instance, the growth of oar trade with France was distinctly due to th...