We shall come in season meet to the five or six millions sterling said to be voted annually "to support the colonies." Now, admitting that the sixteen millions, as stated, of exports colonial do contrast unfavourably with the thirty-five millions of foreign, and that by all the difference, by more than the difference, colonial trade is disparaged in its importance, what becomes of this arithmetical illustration of the superiority of foreign trade, when by the same standard we come to measure it against the home trade, scarcely less a subject of depreciation and vituperation than the colonial, with thinkers of the same impenetrable, if not profound class as the member for Stockport? Here, for his edification, we consign the resulting figures from the standard set up by himself, as they may be found calculated and resolved from minute detail into grand totals in the "General Statistics of the British Empire," by Mr James Macqueen, an authority, perhaps, who will not be questioned by competent judges any where without the pale of the Draconian legislators of the Anti-corn-Law League. "The yearly consumption of the population of Great Britain and Ireland for food, clothing, and lodging, (we give the round numbers only):-- Agricultural produce for food, £.295,479,000 Produce of manufactures, 262,085,000 Imports, (raw produce, &c.) value as landed, 55,000,000 ------------- 612,564,000 Deduct exports, 51,000,000 ------------- £.561,564,000" It follows, then, that whilst foreign trade simply consumes something more than double that of colonial trade, the home trade alone amounts to eleven times over both foreign and colonial together, and by sixteen times as much the amount of foreign trade alone. Upon the hypothesis of Mr Cobden, therefore, foreign trade should be treated as of no value at all in the national sense. Having disposed of Mr Cobden according to Cocker, in reference to his arithmetical demonstrations of the superiority in point of pounds, shillings, and pence value of one sort of trade over another, we may notice some petty trickery, cunningly intended on his part, consisting in the suppression of figures and facts on the one side, and their aggregation on the other, &c., by way of bolstering up unfairly a rotten case. He states the whole colonial trade at £.16,000,000 only, inclusive of British India, whereas Porter's Tables, which he must have consulted, give the _total_ exports of Great Britain to all the world for 1840, at £.51,406,430 Of which colonial, 17,378,550 ------------- Remaining for foreign trade, £.34,027,880