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The Forum

SEPTEMBER, 1901.

THE COMMERCIAL POSITION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

IN the many discussions which are taking place with regard to the commercial supremacy of Great Britain and the relative progress of her foreign competitors, the view of the disputants is too often confined to the trade of the British Isles alone. But that does not comprise the whole of the trade of Great Britain, whose subjects, residing either at home or abroad, are daily engaged in vast operations the records of which are not preserved in the statistical returns of the United Kingdom. To grasp the limits of British trade we must follow the British flag. This appears to the present writer not to be quite understood by Americans generally, who can pretty accurately gauge the commerce of the United States by the entrances and clearances at American ports, and by the statistics of their internal traffic. As I pointed out in a previous article in this review,' the British Empire produces more than it consumes of most things, and it needs an access to all markets for its surplus.

But what is the British Empire? It is not the British Isles alone, but the British Isles plus Canada, India, Australia, British South Africa, British West Africa, British East Africa, the West Indies, and countless unconsidered trifles of possessions scattered over the four quarters of the world. The volume of trade carried on between these possessions, and between these possessions and foreign countries, without ever passing through the ports of the United Kingdom at all, is as much British as if it flowed through the custom-houses of these ports. It seems to be overlooked by most commentators that the volume of this British-Im"The Development of British Shipping." THE FORUM, for December, 1900. Permission to republish articles is reserved.

perial, as distinguished from British-Insular, trade is constantly increasing, and must in the very nature of things go on increasing, not only numerically, but in a progressive ratio, as the economic development of the colonies and possessions advances. It is impossible, therefore, to estimate properly the commercial position of Great Britain among the nations without bringing into focus the trade of all her outlying parts. Practically the whole of that trade is organized, financed, and controlled in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow. The Australian banks and finance companies finance the pastoral and other industries of Australia, but they do it with capital provided by the mother-country. As Lord Bacon wrote:

"The greatness of an estate in bulk and territory, doth fall under measure; and the greatness of finances and revenue doth fall under computation. The population may appear by musters: and the number and greatness of cities and towns, by cards and maps. But yet there is not any thing amongst civil affairs, more subject to error, than the right valuation, and true judgment, concerning the power and forces of an estate. . . . Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the like; all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed and disposition of the people, be stout and warlike. Nay, number itself in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) It never troubles a wolf, how many the sheep be.'"

Well, "the power and forces" of the British Empire, though supported by numbers, do not depend upon numbers but upon "the breed and disposition of the people" who from two tiny islands control the destiny of nations, and conduct half the commerce of the world.

The British Empire, which is really Greater Britain, covers an area of 11,000,000 square miles, and contains a population five times as large as that of the United States. The French Empire with its colonies covers an area of only 3,500,000 square miles, and contains a population not so large as that of the United States. Germany has added 1,000,000 square miles to her imperial territory in Africa and Polynesia, but only 11,000,000 persons to her imperial population. The external possessions of the United States have added 125,000 square miles to the area. and 9,000,000 to the population of the Union. The colonies of Germany and France are the source of a heavy annual expense to the treasuries of the mother-lands. What the new territories may be to the United States remains to be seen. The colonies of Great Britain are no source of expense to the mother-country, but a large source of strength and of profit. They are in point of fact, though not in political organization, provinces of the empire of which they form part and parcel. It is in this sense that they must be regarded when we would measure British commerce.

It was in the times of good or bad - Queen Bess that England woke up to find that she had a vocation, namely, to the trade and com

merce of the sea. Then she spread herself abroad, founded the plantations and colonies of North America, and jostled the Spaniards from the Spanish Main. Since then, her empire has not ceased to grow; but it is not an empire in the sense that Rome or France was an empire, or that Russia is an empire. It is not "a congeries of nations held together by force," but one nation with harmonious, though self-managing, parts. There is more community of interest and closeness of sympathy, more sincere attachment and mutuality, between the mother country and her colonies than there is between the Empire State and the States of the Pacific slope of America. When an Australian, a South African, or a Canadian has occasion to go to London on business or pleasure, he is not merely going to the capital, he is "going home."

The soul of the average man abhors figures, and is disposed to regard the officials of the Statistical Department and the members of the Statistical Society as fiends in human form, whose mission in life is to pander to the politician. Therefore he scoffs, and says that anything can be proved by statistics. But it cannot, though a good deal of deception may be practised by the abuse, or ill-use, of statistics. Nor does one need a mathematical capacity to appreciate the value of statistical records. Without the aid of figures it is impossible to bring the magnitude of the British Empire, its finance, and its commerce, before the reader. Therefore, I must ask him both to excuse and to ponder over the figures I am now going to tabulate. In the first table I set forth the superficial area and the public finance of the British Empire in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia; in the second the statistics of its trade:

This gives a total trade of the British Empire, with its own component parts and with foreign countries, of £1,472,077,572, irrespective, of course, of the value of the home trade of the mother-country and of each colony. The above figures are the latest obtainable; but they do not all refer to 1900, and some are of as early a date as 1898. Now the value of the world's commerce in 1898 was, according to the Chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics, £3,983,000,000; so that the share of it possessed by the British Empire is nearly 40 per cent. I do not, however, know on what Mr. O. P. Austin founds his estimate, whether in his figures he includes the internal trade of the American continent. The figures I am using relate only to trade which actually passed through the custom-houses. In the following table is shown the extent of the trade of the dependencies of Great Britain, between themselves and with the mother-country:

INTERCHANGES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

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