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The effective power of steam-vessels being so largely superior to that of sailing-vessels, lends considerable importance to the following figures of the steam tonnage on the register for the United Kingdom in the years 1851, 1865, and 1870 respectively :

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The gross Customs revenue, after deducting drawbacks, &c., amounted in the following years to

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The total gross receipts of revenue of the United Kingdom during the following years were—

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The expenditure of Great Britain, which amounted in 1842 to £55,223,874, was in 1853 £55,769,252, in 1865-66 £65,914,357, and in 1870 £68,864,752.

The amounts of the unredeemed funded and of the unfunded debt were respectively

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They show

The figures we give are worth serious consideration. how enormous was the increase in our trade and manufactures from the moment that we had, as a nation, acquired sufficient common sense to remove restrictions, and so-called "protection.”

If anything will satisfy those nations who are still halting on the threshold, that trade to be prosperous must be "unprotected," we think our figures will do it. What, for instance, will our American cousins say to the fact that the real value of our exports and imports has been doubled since 1854, and that the real value of British and Irish manufactures exported has more than quadrupled since 1842, and to the further fact that the registered tonnage of our mercantile marine has doubled. Our home readers who are interested specially in manufactures, may find something in the fact, that "iron and steel" exports have increased from two millions to twenty one millions of pounds in value; and that some other of our manufactures have increased in value in a proportion almost as great.

Our timid people at home, who fear we are overbuilding ships, will gather some grains of comfort from our figures, for they will see that, although the tonnage of our steam fleet has increased by nearly one million of tons since 1851, the whole tonnage of the United Kingdom

was less in 1870 than it was in 1865. They need not, after seeing these figures, have very great fears that down to the end of 1870 we were building too many steam ships.

Again, with all our reduction of duties, we find that the gross receipts of Revenue in 1870 were not less than 30 per cent. above the gross receipts for 1842; and, as regards our debts, we find that the funded and unfunded debt has, in the same time, been reduced by over fortythree millions sterling.

That the British shipowner and merchant have been ruined by legislative action is, we think, scarcely to be affirmed after this. On the contrary, we think that those interests have every reason to be satisfied with the results.

It is proper to wind up a notice like the present with a note of warning, and this we accordingly proceed to do. It is as follows::

Great Britain may think a little too much of her present prosperity, and may in consequence, some day find, just for want of a few thousands of pounds judiciously laid out in training her merchant seamen, that her ships of war cannot be manned in case of emergency. We speak advisedly when we further say that this must of a certainty happen, unless some serious and earnest attempt is made by the Board of Trade and Admiralty together to extend and improve our reserves.

The scheme recommended by the last Royal Commission, presided over by Mr. Cardwell, sketched out the best plan ever yet presented to the public, or recommended to Her Majesty's Government; and our present tiny "Royal Naval Reserve"-our only reserve of merchant seamen is the result of an experiment founded on the smallest and most unimportant of the recommendations of the Commission, and attempted without reference to those recommendations as a whole.

Those of our readers who specially turn their attention to our means of defence will find material for reflection, and for strengthening their arguments in favor of the speedy establishment of efficient reserves of seamen and ships. They will be able to contemplate the state of utter helplessness to which we should, as a nation, be reduced, if our merchant ships at sea were interfered with by an enemy's

cruisers.

If our merchant ships could not reach our ports, from whence should we obtain substitutes for the annual six million pounds of cocoa, the thirty million pounds of coffee, the many millions of quarters of wheat, the hundred and seventeen million pounds of tea, the four million of cuts. of rice, the four hundred and thirty millions of eggs, and last, and most important, the eight hundred thousand head of sheep and oxen which we require for annual consumption; and which are now brought to us from beyond the seas.

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