By the system founded on these principles, there has not only been distributed amongst a numerous population a great increase of employment, but its diffusion has been greater in proportion, than its increase. It is also very remarkable, that those trades which have been prominent in complaining of foreign competition have neither suffered more in diminution of profits, nor increased less in extent of business, than those which have been able to hold foreign competition at defiance. Besides this consolidation of the Customs' Laws which took place in 1825, an Act was passed in the session of that year, whereby many commercial advantages were conferred on the Colonies, beyond those contained in Mr. Robinson's two acts of 1822; Mr. Huskisson laying down as the fundamental principle on which his alterations were founded--a principle deduced from past experience with respect both to _Ireland and to our Colonies_--that "so far as the Colonies themselves were concerned, their prosperity was cramped and impeded by a system of exclusion and monopoly; and that whatever tended to increase the prosperity of the Colonies could not fail, in the long run, to advance, in an equal degree, the general interests of the parent state." By these Acts, not only articles of first necessity, but goods of all descriptions, with very few exceptions, were allowed to be imported from all countries, either in British ships, or in ships of the country of their production; and the goods of the Colonies were allowed to be exported in any ships to any foreign country whatever. The only part of the Colonial system which was persevered in, was that which excludes foreign ships from carrying goods from one British place to another; "so that by this arrangement was preserved the foundation of our Navigation Laws--all intercourse between the mother-country and the Colonies, whether direct or circuitous, and all intercourse of the Colonies with each other, being considered as a coasting trade to be reserved entirely and absolutely for ourselves." The admission of foreign ships, however, was not unconditional: it was made to depend upon reciprocal or equivalent liberality towards our trade and navigation on the part of the countries profiting by the advantages of it; but a power was given to the King in Council to relax the rigour of the Law, if occasion should, in any particular cases, seem to require it. By the same act, the privileges of warehousing were extended to the chief trading ports of the Colonies; a measure, which was well adapted to promote the creation of _entrepôts_ in those places, for the general barter trade of that quarter of the globe.