ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 52, 27 January 1843, Page 3

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.

('From the Colonial Magazine.) England exists in eveuv part op the World by means of her Colonies.— lt is a truthful and proud boast, that over the dominions of our Sovereign there is never complete darkness; the area of the British empire comprises an extent of 2,250,000 square miles, equal to 1,440,000,000 acres, over a large portion of which there are only from one to three mouths to each square mile of surface; while in the United Kingdom alone, the proportion of mouths to each square mile is about three, hundred, (a denser population than that of China with its 368,000,000 inhabitants.) The direct annual revenue of the transmarine possessions of England is 23,000,000/. sterling, while the whole cost of the civil government of these vast possessions to the home Exchequer is but 228,000 per annum ! The maritime commerce of these possessions amounts yearly to 55,000,000, of which one half is carried on direct with England ; and the profits on which to the whole empire, are therefore equivalent to double'the amount, if carried on with a foreign country; the burden of shipping entering inwards and outwards annually, in all our possessions, amounts to the enormous quantity of seven millions five hundred thousand tons, of which 250,000 is direct to and from England; the troops of - the line, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, raised in our maritime possessions, or paid by them, without a shilling cost from the home exchequer,- amount to one hundred and fifty thousand men; and the militia, consisting entirely of Europeans, comprises 250,000 men at arms ! The property annually created in our maritime possessions amounts to 317,000,000; and the amount of moveable and immoveable property in them, including timber, mines, houses, roads, buildings, forts, ships, harbours, cattle, horses, sheep, merchandise, &c., has been estimated, for each colony, on fair data, at the enormous sum of two thousand and four hundred millions 5ter1ing—2,443,150,000/. The transmarine dominions of this insular (kingdom offer to the agriculturist measureless field for pasturage and tillage; to the manufacturer, an incalculable extension of the home market for the disposal of his wares; to the merchant and mariner, vast marts for profitable traffic in every product with which nature has bountifully enriched the earth; to the capitalist, an almost interminable site for the profitable investment of his funds; and to the industrious, skilful, and intelligent emigrant, an area of upwards of two millions square miles, where every species of mental ingenuity and manual labor 'may be developed, and nurtured into action, to the whole family of man.

England lias no need to manufacture beetroot sugar (as France) ; her West and Eas* India possessions yield an inexhaustible profusion of the cane ; grain, (whether wheat, barley, oats, maize, or. rice), everywhere abounds; her Asiatic, American, Australasian, and African possessions, contain boundless supplies of timber, corn, coal, iron, copper, gold, hemp, wax, tar, tallow, &c. e the finest wools are grown in her South Asian and South African regions ; cotton, silk, opium, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, spices, saltpetre, spirits, wines, fruits, drugs, and dyes, are procurable, of every variety and to any extent, in the East and in the West, in the North and the South of the empire; on the icy coast of Labrador, as well as at the opposite pole, our adventurous hunters and fishers pursue their gigantic game within sight of their protecting flag; and on every soil, and beneath every habitable clime, Britons desirous of change, or who cannot find occupation at home, may be found implanting or extending language, laws, and liberties of their fatherland. In fine, on this wondrous empire the sun never sets; while the hardy woodsman and the heroic hunter on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa, are shivering beneath a wintry solstice, the peaceful but no less meritorious farmer and shepherd on the Kysna and Hawkesbury, are rejoicing over the golden grain and fleece of the autumnal southern clime; arid her adventurous sons are boldly invading with the arts of civilized life, the recently horrid regions of cannabalism, in the islands of the New Zealanders ; and every breeze that blows from 'the arctic to the antarctic circles, is wafting over the unfathomable ocean myriads, “ Whose march is on the mountain waves, Whose home is on the deep.” 0