In the national point of view, the profitableness of the foreign export trade, as compared with colonial, would seem more dubious still, when the values left and distributed among the producing classes are taken into calculation.  Of the total foreign exports of thirty-five millions, considerably above one-fifth—­say, to the value of nearly seven and a half millions sterling—­were exported in the shape of cotton, linen, and woollen yarns in 1840, the year selected by Mr Cobden, of which, in cotton yarn alone, to the value of nearly 6,200,000.  According to Burn’s Commercial Glance for 1842, the average price of cotton-yarn so exported, exceeds by some 50 per cent the average price of the cotton from which made.  Applying the same rule to linen yarn as made from foreign imported flax, and to woollen yarn as partly, at least, from foreign wool, we come to a gross sum of about L.3,750,000 left in the country, as values representing the wages of labour, and the profits of manufacturing capital in respect of yarn.  The quantity of yarn, on the contrary, exported colonially, does not reach to one-sixteenth of the total colonial exports.  In order to manifest the immense superiority nationally of a colonial export trade in finished products, over a foreign trade in quasi raw materials, we need only take the article of “apparel.”  Of the total value of wearing apparel exported in 1840, say for L.1,208,000, the colonial trade alone absorbed the best part of one million.  Now, it may be estimated with tolerable certainty, that the average amount, over and above the cost of the raw material, of the values expended upon and left in the country, in the shape of wages and profits, upon this description of finished product, does not fall short of the rate of 500 per cent.  So that apparel to the total value of one million would leave behind an expenditure of labour, and a realization of profits, substantially existing and circulating among the community, over and above the cost of raw material, of about L.800,000, upon a basis of raw material values of about L.160,000.  Assuming for a moment, that yarns were equally improved and prolific in the multiplication of values, the seven millions and a half of foreign exports should represent a value proportionally of forty-five millions sterling.  The colonial exports comprise a variety of similar finished and made-up articles, to the extent of probably about four millions sterling, to which the same rate of home values, so swelled by labour and profits, will apply.

It remains only to add, that the foreign export trade gave employment in 1840—­the date fixed by Mr Cobden, but to which, in some few instances, it has been impossible to adhere for want of necessary documents, as he himself experienced—­to 10,970 British vessels, of 1,797,000 aggregate tonnage outwards, repeated voyages inclusive, for the verification of the number of which we are without any returns, those made to Parliament by the public offices bearing