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Rh the largest mercantile fleet in existence and she has much the largest colonial empire. But Norway with no colonies at all has about one and a half million tons of mercantile marine to a population of about two and a quarter millions. The British mercantile marine is somewhere about ten and a quarter million tons and about one and a half million more for the colonies, &c, with a population for the United Kingdom of about forty-two millions: that is to say the United Kingdom with an immense colonial empire has about .25 of a ton of shipping per head of population where Norway without any colonies at all has .66 of a ton of shipping per head of population—or a good deal more than double as much! The two cases are extreme, but still undoubtedly suggest that there is no necessary connection between the possession of colonies and a large mercantile marine.

It is not the purport of this chapter to try to prove that England's colonies are useless to her—apart from other considerations the question is outside the scope of the book. But it is certainly to be suggested that colonies are of no advantage whatever to the Navy, and that there is a good deal of scope for someone to convince colonials that, instead of the empire depending upon them for its existence, it is they that owe their existence to the empire. It is a point which colonial opinion is often unaware of.