From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to six millions.  It has increased no less than twelve-fold.  This is the state of the colony trade, as compared with itself at these two periods, within this century;—­and this is matter for meditation.  But this is not all.  Examine my second account.  See how the export trade to the colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of England in 1704.

The whole export trade of England, including
that to the colonies, in 1704 L6,509,000
Export to the colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000
          
                                     ---------
                              Difference L485,000

The trade with America alone is now within less than 500,000_l._ of being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century with the whole world!  If I had taken the largest year of those on your table, it would rather have exceeded.  But, it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body?  The reverse.  It is the very food that has nourished every other part into its present magnitude.  Our general trade has been greatly augmented, and augmented more or less in almost every part to which it ever extended, but with this material difference:  that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our export commerce the colony trade was but one twelfth part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of the whole.  This is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods:  and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration.  It is good for us to be here.  We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past.  Clouds indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future.  Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man.  It has happened within sixty-eight years.  There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities.  For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress.  He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things.  He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus.  Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation