ent of expenditure
between each, and again of the quotas corresponding to the colonies or to
foreign commerce alone, defies any approach to accurate analysis. But we
have at least common observation and common sense to satisfy us that but a
small proportion of the naval outlay can be justly laid to colonial
account, because so unimportant a proportion of the naval armament afloat,
can be required for colonial service or defence. We have, assuredly, a
certain number of gun-boats and schooners on the Canadian lakes, which are
purely for colonial purposes; and we may have some half-a-dozen vessels of
war prowling about the St Lawrence and the British American waters, which
may range under the colonial category. Wherever else our eyes be cast, it
would be difficult to find one colony, east or west, which can be said to
need, or gratuitously to be favoured with, a naval force for protection.
We have a naval station at Halifax chargeable colonially. We have also a
naval station, with headquarters at Jamaica, but certainly that forms no
part of a colonial appendage. The whole of the force on that station is
employed either in cruizing after slavers, and assisting to put down the
slave trade, or it is hovering about the shores of the Spanish Main and
the Gulf of Mexico, for the protection of British foreign commerce, for
redressing the wrongs to British subjects and interests in Colombia,
Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, or Hayti, or for conveying foreign specie and
bullion from those countries for the behoof of British merchants at home.
We have a naval station at the Cape of Good Hope, with the maintenance of
which, that colony, Australia, New Zealand, &c., may be partly debited.
And we have a naval station in India, the expense of which, so far as
required for that great colonial empire, is, we believe, borne entirely by
India herself. But by far the largest proportion of the expense is
incurred, as the great bulk of the force is destined, for the protection
of foreign commerce in the Indian and Chinese seas.

If we are to seek where the British navy is really to be found and heard
of in masses, we have only to voyage to Brazil, where whole squadrons
divide their occupations betwixt coursing slavers and waiting upon foreign
commerce. Further south, we find the River Plate blocked up with British
war ships, watching over the interests of British commerce, and
interposing betwixt the lives and properties of thousands of British
subject