COST OF THE COLONIES.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 323, 25 June 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 on 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 £149,616, but of the rest of the Dominion of Canada only about £4OOO. Of the whole cost of all the colonies for the year in question, £1,629,626 out of the £1,817,471, was chiefly for military and naval stations—which we think have, with unfairness to the colonies, been hitherto included in returns of colonial sxpenditure. "Economists" who consider the colonies a burden, and other superficial observers, give the colonies proper credit for the cost which such so-called colonies as Malta, Gibraltar. Bermuda, and several smaller places v,jcasion to the Imperial Exchequer ; so thus during the most expensive years the real colonies have been set down a f . even a higher rate than should justly have been charged against them. It would in future be desirable that military and naval stations should be entered under different headings 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 be no longer any return of the I " Cost of the Colonies."

The nominal cost of the colonies to this country has for some years been diminishing, and it is doubtful if, even in the most expen ■ sive periods, they have been of any real cost to her. Mr Archibald Hamilton has shown that in the nineteen years from 1853 to 1871 —a period which contaiued §years of New Zealand wars, &c—the revenue derived from the exports to the colonies, which amounted to £450,798,000, taken at the most moderate estimate of £lO, would be upwards of £45,000,000, whilst the expenditure did not reach £44,000,000. And this, it must be 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 ot the burden of the colonies upon their own ground of figures, and shows also by a process of proof, which answers with substantial facts all their declamation and thoughtless assertions, that the colonies are positively a source of considerable aud increasing profit to the revenue of the mother-country over and above any outlay they may occasion her. For instance, he calculates that in 1871 the revenue which the colonial trade brought into the English treasury was, at the lowest computation, £2,600,000, whereas the cost of the colonies to the mother-country was only £1,110,000. leaving a surplus of just a million and a hall of clear profit,

The last official return therefoie proclaims this fact, that in 1872—3 the whole of the colonies proper, including Australia at £14,000, Canada at £4OOO, Nova Scotia at £149,616, and the Cape at £162.827, coat in 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 amount ? It must therefore be obvious to any reflecting man that the assertion that the colonies are 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.