e many years of
peaceful industry and commerce. Then, again, London is favourably
adapted to trade in respect to its own country. It is a seaport, sixty
miles inland, and is connected by navigable canals with all the other
chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. Its railway
facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing
town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of
freightage from it. Then, too, the peculiar configuration of the
coast-line of Great Britain makes every point on the island within an
hour or two of carriage from a seaport. Finally, all British seaports
are in trade connection with London by a coasting service unequalled
in the world for cheapness, completeness, and efficiency. In a word,
London stands not only in the centre of the land surface of the globe,
but also at the commercial centre of its own home territory--that is
to say, within easy reach both by water and by land of all the trading
and producing interests of a people that for centuries have been
leaders in commercial and manufacturing industry and enterprise.

GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMERCIAL POLICY

But that which more than anything else has made London the great trade
centre of the world has been the policy, now for many years adopted by
the British people, of allowing the goods and products of all other
nations to enter their ports untaxed. Every port in Britain is a free
port of entry for all imported merchandise except spirits, tobacco,
wine, tea, coffee, cocoa, and chicory; and ships of all nations are
allowed to trade at British ports upon terms exactly the same as those
laid down for British ships. The result is that Britain has become the
entrepot or distributing mart for the produce of the world. Ships of
all nations are found at her wharves, and commodities from all parts
of the world brought in those ships are found in her warehouses. Her
mercantile navy numbers 21,000 vessels, and 8000 of these are
steamships. The tonnage of these vessels amounts to over 8,750,000
tons, and of this nearly 8,000,000 is engaged in the foreign trade
alone. Her mercantile sailors number over 250,000 men, and over
150,000 of these are engaged in the foreign trade. London is, of
course, the chief gainer from this perfect unrestriction of trade.
Twenty-seven per cent. of the whole trade of the country is in its
hands. Its merchants do business in every seaport on the globe, and
the trade of Great Britain