Once more we see that we not only stand at the head of the list, but are far ahead of Germany and the United States, France making the best show against us.
Let us now examine the figures concerning ocean shipping. What is shown is the effective tonnage, arrived at by multiplying steam tonnage by 5 in order to get a common denominator:—
| 1869. Tons. |
| 1879. Tons. | |
| Great Britain | 9,520,000 | 16,630,000 | |
| France | 1,598,000 | 1,960,000 | |
| Germany | 1,310,000 | 1,950,000 | |
| United States | 2,454,000 | 2,315,000 |
We thus see that while in these ten years we have increased our effective tonnage by 7 millions, the United States have lost 140,000 tons!
Gentlemen, these shipping figures are conclusive. Protectionist nations may, by hocus pocus, conceal the losses they internally suffer from their system, but they cannot conceal the facts which these figures show.
And lastly, let us see how it fares with us all as regards foreign commerce. Take the totals:—
| 1870. | Per Head. | 1880. | Per Head. | ||||||
| £ | £ | s. | d. | £ | £ | s. | d. | ||
| Great Britain | 547,338,070 | 17 | 10 | 10 | 697,644,031 | 20 | 4 | 10 | |
| France | 249,000,000 | 6 | 9 | 0 | 332,000,000 | 8 | 17 | 0 | |
| Germany | 270,000,000 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 384,000,000 | 8 | 10 | 0 | |
| United States | 172,000,000 | 4 | 9 | 0 | 301,000,000 | 6 | 0 | 0 | |
The above figures are taken from Mulhall's "Balance-sheet of the World," as I have said, and they speak for themselves.
I will now quote from an admirably written article in the October number of the Nineteenth Century, written by Mr. Thomas P. Whittaker:—
"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 the Americans themselves (excluding the trade between the two countries):—
