iron, steel and hardware, brass and copper manufactures, glass, lead, and shot, &c. &c.; of colonial produce exported, the principal articles are coffee, piece goods of India, rum, raw sugar, indigo, &c. &c.  The principal imports of Great Britain are cotton wool, raw sugar, tea, flax, coffee, raw silk, train oil and blubber, madder, indigo, wines, &c. &c.  The principal imports into Ireland consist of old drapery, entirely from Great Britain; coals, also entirely from Great Britain; iron wrought and unwrought, nearly the whole from Great Britain; grocery, mostly direct from the West Indies; tea, from Britain, &c. &c.  In fact, of the total imports of Ireland, five-sixths of them are from Great Britain; and of her exports, nine-tenths are to Great Britain.  The principal articles of export are linen, butter, wheat, meal, oats, bacon, pork, &c. &c.

On the 30th September, 1822, there belonged to the United Kingdom 24,642 vessels, making a total of 2,519,044 tons, and navigated by 166,333 men; of the vessels employed in the foreign trade, including their repeated voyages, in the year ending the 5th of January 1823, there were about 12,000, of which upwards of 9,000 were British and Irish, and the rest foreign vessels.  The coasting trade of England is calculated to employ 3000 vessels.  We have already stated the proportion which the trade of Ireland to Britain bore to her trade with the rest of the world; this point may be still further elucidated by the following fact:  that the number of vessels, (including their repeated voyages,) which entered the ports of Ireland, from all parts of the world, in the year ending the 5th of January, 1823, was 11,561, and that all these, except 943, came from Great Britain.

From this rapid view of the commerce of the European states, it appears that, with the exception of Great Britain, by far the largest portion and greatest value of the exports of each country consist in the produce of the soil, either in its raw and natural state, or after having undergone a change that requires little industry, manual labour, or mechanical agency.  Britain, on the contrary, derives her exports almost entirely from the produce of her wonderful mechanical skill, which effects, in many cases, what could alone be accomplished by an immense population, and in a few cases, what no manual labour could perform.

In reviewing the commerce of the remaining parts of the world, we shall find the articles that constitute it almost exclusively the produce of the soil, or, where manufactured, owing the change in their form and value to the simplest contrivances and skill.  We shall begin with Asia.

Turkey possesses some of the finest portions of this quarter of the globe; countries in which man first emerged into civilization, literature, and knowledge; rich in climate and soil, but dreadfully degraded, oppressed, and impoverished by despotism.  The exports from the European part of Turkey are carpets, fruit, saffron, silk, drugs, &c.:  the principal port is Constantinople.  From Asiatic Turkey there are exported rhubarb and other drugs, leather, silk, dye stuffs, wax, sponge, barilla, and hides:  nearly the whole foreign trade is centered in Smyrna, and is in the hands of the English and French, and Italians.  The imports are coffee, sugar, liqueurs, woollen and cotton goods, lead, tin, jewellery, watches, &c.