COST OF THE COLONIES.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 36, 14 August 1875, Page 3

COST OF THE COLONIES.

(From the “ Colonies.”) Under the above heading a short but most significant paragraph appeared in our last issue. It contained the pith of a parliamentary paper, which speaks with the highest official authority upon the subject. It appears that, after deducting the expense still occasioned by the penal establishments of Western Australia—which were formed purely for the purpose of punishing English criminals—the total cost in 1872-3 to the mother-country of the Australian colonies fell below £14,000. The expenses of Nova Scotia was £149,516, but of the res': of the Dominion of Canada only about £4OOO. Of the whole cost of all the colonies for the year in question, £1,629,620 out of the £1,817,471, was chiefly uiiUtan a .d naval stations—which we think have, with unfairness to the colonics, been hitherto included in returns of colonial expenditure. ‘'Economists,” who consider the colonies a burthen, and other superficial observers, give the colonies proper credit for the cost which socalled colonies as Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and several smaller places occasion to the Imperial Exchequer ? so thus during the most expensive year the real colonies have been set down at even a

bi ;her rat 1 than shou'd justly hav b ' m charg'd against them. It would in future be desirable that m’litary and na\al stations should he entered uialt different li aulings in official returns of Imperial expenditure, so that when the colonies altogether cease, as they soon will, to cause any expense to the mother country there may no longer bo any return of the “ Cost of the Colonies.” The nominal cost of the colonics to this country has for some years been diminishing, and it is doubtful if, even in the most expensive periods, they have been of any real cost to her. Mr Archibald Hamilton lias shown that in the nineteen years from 1853 to 1871 —a period which contained years of New .Zealand -wars, &o, —-the revenue derived from the exports to the colonies, which amounted to £450,71)8,000 taken at tie most moderate estimate of £lO, would be upwards of £45,000,000, whilst the expenditure did not roach £44,000,000. And, this it must bo remembered, was during a period when some of the most flourishing of the colonies were for a time in a comparatively infant and helpless condition. Mr Hamilton meets those who complain of the b mien of the colonies upon their own ground of figures, and shows also by a process of proof, which answers with snlista ntial facts all their declamation and thoughtless assertions, that the colonies are positively a source of considerable and increasing profit to the revenue of the mother country over and above any outlay they may occasion her. For instance, lie calculates that in 1871 the revenue which the colonial trade brought into the English Treasury was, at the lowest computation, £2,000,000, whereas the co st of the colonies to the mother country was only £1,110,000, leaving a surplus of just a million and a half clear profit The last official return therefore proclaims this fact, that in 1872-3 the wliol > of the colonies proper, including Australia at £14,000, Canada at £4,000, Nova Scotia at £149,010, and the Cape at £162,827, cost iu round numbers considerably under half a million. Will any “economist” venture to assert that the English Exchequer was not enriched by the colonial trade to more than that am onnt ? It must therefore be obvious to any reflecting man that the assertion that the colonies arc a burden to the English taxpayers is utterly untenable, and that any one who ventures to maintain such a proposition can only do so by forfeiting any reputation for common sense which he ever may have had.