The result of her policy has been to acquire wealth from every source, to become the manufacturer for the world, and to compel less powerful nations to became her cus tomers. But she conferred benefits while exacting their tribute.
From the year 1075 to 1575, the population of Great Britain but little more than doubled itself in five hundred years; and from 1575 to 1750 the increase was less than one-third. But during the first half of the present century the population of the United Kingdom more than doubled itself, besides sending a constant stream of emigration to the United States, Canada, Australia, Africa, and other parts of the globe.
In 1816, at the close of the French War, the debt of Great Britain was $4,205,000,000, and her estimated wealth $10,500,000,000. Since then, the increase of her wealth has been rapid, and may now be stated at nearly $100,000,000,000.
She has not only so vastly increased her wealth, but her ability to produce has been proportionally increased. In 1688 her population was less than 6,000,000, and the industrial or productive power of these were limited to the able-bodied men and women, boys and girls, who exerted only their brute strength, with but little assistance from intelligence, mechanical skill, or science. But in 1865 we find a population of over 30,000,000, whose average wealth is over $3000 per head, and whose productive ability is increased 20 times by the aid of labor-saving machinery; that is, the 30,000,000 inhabitants of Great Britain, aided by steam-power and mechanical skill, is equal to a physical force of 600,000,000 able-bodied men, or more productive power than is pos sessed by the entire manual labor of the world.
We need not say that China with her 340,000,000 can neither compete with the 30,000,000 of England in industrial resources or material power.
We cannot attribute this wonderful increase to her agricultural production or her extent, but must seek its cause in the prudent management of her domestic industry and political economy, her mechanical skill and constant protection to the production of her labor.
That little island, not larger than one of our great States, represents more available wealth than that of the world combined. She has conquered from savage and barbaric nations two great continents, and planted her children and established her language over an area of 12,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface, and reclaimed to civiliza tion the best portions of the inhabitable globe.
That she has sought self-aggrandizement in all this we cannot deny; but the result has been a benefit to mankind. They who cannot help themselves cannot confer benefits on others. "Talents" that are hidden are not productive. To they who have most more shall be given, simply because they earn it and deserve it Wilful ignorance and folly are greater sins than " sharp bargaining" or the accumulation of wealth by far seeing sagacity, even to the loss of others or at the expense of ignorance.
We can only blame ourselves, therefore, that England has, to the present time, prted more by our superior resources than ourselves, or that she has pocketed the an/ual products of our gold-mines. We pay her superior intelligence, skill, and sagacity nearly $100,000,000 per annum, all of which might be saved by putting in practice the policy of England,—to buy nothing we can make ourselves, to encourage no foreign trade which does not pay a profit, but to stimulate every manufacture and every commercial transaction which will realize profit and produce general prosperity.
During the early ages the arts and manufactures flourished in Asia and Africa. The Middle Ages transferred these industries to Europe; but England was neither first in wealth or power when Florence and Amsterdam were in their zenith of prosperity. She never would have acquired her present position had not her intelligence led to the practical development of her immense resources in coal and iron. Was she not the first to make use of the steam-engine, and create from coal, iron, and steam a laboring force equal to the physical strength of all the able-bodied men of the world? But even these advantages were not sufficient to the wonderful results which transformed the little island from heath and moor to a garden—from poverty to opulence—in the short period of a hundred years. Money, the machinery which puts all else in motion, was wanted, and this was provided by war, which has always been considered as calamitous and exhaustive; but, though long, bloody, and costly, it brought wealth to England. Paper money, which sophistical economists condemn, was the means of making gold plentiful in England. Her consols, representing her debt, gave her people the means of converting her stones of coal and rocks of iron into labor-saving machinery, and creating a productive industry which has rivalled the world.