The Patea Mail. (Published Wednesdays and Saturdays.) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1879.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 405, 5 March 1879, Page 2

The Patea Mail. (Published Wednesdays and Saturdays.) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1879.

There arc people in the world who interpret every comet, earthquake, or auroral display as an announcement of the end of all things, and whose faith in their interpretations is not shaken by repeated failures of fulfilment. Every department of the world’s thought and industry has its army of pessimist and alarmist camp followers, who on the slightest provocation mount their hobby steeds and charge, while all the world wonders, A particularly large army of this description has followed upon the trail of the present stagnation of trade in England. Cries about the ‘ Migration of Centres of Industrial Energy,’ ‘ Loss of Commercial Supremacy,’ and * National Bankruptcy,’ have waked the echoes far and near. While the hearts of many true Britons all over the world have ached at these cries, those not altogether destitute of the organ of hope, have bethought them of other period? of English history, in which tin's cry lias been raised. Notably, during the American Revolutionary War, during the Napoleonic Wars, and after the peace of 1815. Yet none of those trying times proved to be the beginning of the end. If Britain then, after the loss of her Colonial Empire, after twenty years of war, after incurring debt far in excess of all the world beside,, began to enter upon nrrhoard-of prosperity, after she has gained a new Colonial Empire, after twenty years of peace, after accumulating fabulous wealth, shall destruction come like a whirlwind? If commercial supremacy depaits from every country that is commercially depressed, where does it go when all are depressed, as in the present instance? We have not read of any country stepping into the prosperity that lately belonged to England. The cry of want from Germany and Russia is heartrending. France, with all the excitement of the Exposition, is In a worse state than she was before England began to complain. In spite of the proverbial prosperity of young countries, the murmur of ‘ hard times’ comes from the United States ; while in South America we read that the people arc eating carrion and corpses. Whore, then,'has prosperity taken up its abode, since it has left all countries at ance ? And why should it be spoken of as leaving England in particular 1 We grant that Britain has not the monopoly of manufacturing art that she once rejoiced in. Many other producers have stepped forward within the last century. Bat is there not room for all ? While fresh nations of consumers are growing up in The souLliem hemisphere, while fresh outlets for goods arc continually being discovered in Africa, while China and Japan find their necessities for European manufactures continually on the increase, why should England above all countries, despair of a reasonable share in supplying the market of the world ? We may be met by the question, “ Other things being equal, why may not another country than England become the commercial centre of the world?” If labour, coal, and skill, are as cheap and plentiful in Germany or America as in England, why should not one of these become the market of the world? We confess that we know no reason —except that it does not. What monopoly of skill, labour, or coal, has the town of Bradford that the alpaca trade stays there 1 Why should it not remove to Nottingham, Manchester, or Leeds ? We know of no reason:—except that it doos not. Why should not the cotton trade remove to Leeds, or the ■wool trade remove lo Manchester ? There is no reason in the nature of things why the ' remove should not take place, and yet it does not. In the same manner it may be very forcibly argued that if the conditions of trade were all as favorable in America, or on the Continent, as they are in England, it by no means follows that the “centre of Industrial Energy” would “ migrate.” There is, we conceive, no reason for regarding the present distress as other than temporary. It may cover a period, considerable in the life of a man, but momentary in the life of a nation.