The Imports Are Principally
English Goods, And Colonial Produce, Tin, Lead, &C.
We have already dwelt on the causes which produced the immense commercial
superiority of England; and we shall, therefore, now confine ourselves to
an enumeration of its principal ports, and the principal articles of its
export and import.
London possesses considerably above one-half of the
commerce of Great Britain; the next town is undoubtedly Liverpool; then may
be reckoned, in England, Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, Sunderland, Yarmouth,
&c.; in Scotland, Greenock, Leith, Aberdeen, Dundee, &c.; in Ireland, Cork,
Dublin, Limerick, Belfast, Waterford, &c. From the last return of the
foreign trade of Great Britain it appears, that by far the most important
article of export is cotton manufactures and yarn, amounting in real or
declared value to nearly one-half of the whole amount of goods exported;
the next articles, arranged according to their value, are woollen
manufactures, refined sugar, linen manufactures, iron, steel and hardware,
brass and copper manufactures, glass, lead, and shot, &c. &c.; of colonial
produce exported, the principal articles are coffee, piece goods of India,
rum, raw sugar, indigo, &c. &c. The principal imports of Great Britain are
cotton wool, raw sugar, tea, flax, coffee, raw silk, train oil and blubber,
madder, indigo, wines, &c. &c. The principal imports into Ireland consist
of old drapery, entirely from Great Britain; coals, also entirely from
Great Britain; iron wrought and unwrought, nearly the whole from Great
Britain; grocery, mostly direct from the West Indies; tea, from Britain,
&c. &c. In fact, of the total imports of Ireland, five-sixths of them are
from Great Britain; and of her exports, nine-tenths are to Great Britain.
The principal articles of export are linen, butter, wheat, meal, oats,
bacon, pork, &c. &c.
On the 30th September, 1822, there belonged to the United Kingdom 24,642
vessels, making a total of 2,519,044 tons, and navigated by 166,333 men; of
the vessels employed in the foreign trade, including their repeated
voyages, in the year ending the 5th of January 1823, there were about
12,000, of which upwards of 9,000 were British and Irish, and the rest
foreign vessels. The coasting trade of England is calculated to employ 3000
vessels. We have already stated the proportion which the trade of Ireland
to Britain bore to her trade with the rest of the world; this point may be
still further elucidated by the following fact: that the number of vessels,
(including their repeated voyages,) which entered the ports of Ireland,
from all parts of the world, in the year ending the 5th of January, 1823,
was 11,561, and that all these, except 943, came from Great Britain.
From this rapid view of the commerce of the European states, it appears
that, with the exception of Great Britain, by far the largest portion and
greatest value of the exports of each country consist in the produce of the
soil, either in its raw and natural state, or after having undergone a
change that requires little industry, manual labour, or mechanical agency.
Britain, on the contrary, derives her exports almost entirely from the
produce of her wonderful mechanical skill, which effects, in many cases,
what could alone be accomplished by an immense population, and in a few
cases, what no manual labour could perform.
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