Progress of Foreign Trade.

In the year ending January 5, 1841, the gross produce of Customs and Excise duties was £38,258,866; the gross revenue, which for the year ending the 31st March last was £89,581,301, was then only £51,684,766. The Customs tariff then comprised some 1,200 articles of import subject to duty; the total number of articles and subdivisions of them is now about 20. The Excise tariff included many articles now happily liberated, such as bricks, glass, candles, leather, soap, paper, &c., &c. In the interim Customs Duties have been repealed or reduced to the net amount of £24,385,289; Excise Duties increased, in consequence of transfer of assessed taxes, &c., to that department, by that of £1,623,684, leaving on Customs and Excise a net reduction of £22,976,404. The produce of both in the year ended the 31st of March last was £45,287,000, an increase of £7,028,134 compared with their yield in 1840, showing an actual recovery of £30,004,538 from the partial liberation of trade, and affording the greatest possible encouragement to further progress in the same direction, of which proofs may be gathered from the following tables :—

The increase of Imports was therefore 145 per cent., that of Exports 5 per cent., and that of Imports and Exports 55 per cent, in the first 10 years; that of Imports 239 per cent., of Exporte 49 per cent., and of Imports and Exports 117 per cent. in 20 years; that of Imports 563 per cent., of Exports 160 per cent., and that of Importe and Exports 305 per cent. in 40 years. In face of such facts it is nothing lets than marvellous that shipbuilders, shipowners, merchants, manufacturers, and traders generally, of all political parties, are so blind to their own interests as not to demand with one voice the abolition of Customs and Excise, and the establishment of perfect Freedom of Trade.