Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/80

70 a deficiency of over 10,000,000 florins a year in her East India possessions. The budget for 1898 shows an expense état of 146,150,164 florins, which is met by a revenue from all sources of but 135,204,203 florins.

This is the richest part of the Malay world, and for centuries has been in the possession of Europe's most enlightened people. The results, if the per-capita unit of imports and exports is taken as a criterion, are not different from those shown in the account of the Philippines, governed for centuries by Spain. The loss of their colonies is ascribed to the oppressive rule which the Spaniards exercised. The Netherlands, devoting all their efforts to the development of the resources of the islands, at least during the greater part of this century, do not show much better results. The imports per capita of the Dutch possessions are $1.80, and the exports $2.63. The imports of the Philippines are $1.50 and the exports $2.63 per capita.

From this we may be permitted to deduce that the Malay Islands are not likely to prove a more thankful field for cultivation by our traders than to the extent indicated in the trade reports set forth above.

Under the conditions here delineated, it would be inviting all the risks and dangers connected with expansion and colonization, while nothing is to be gained in a commercial sense that can not be realized by the means now in our hands.

All the ends of trade can be attained without territorial expansion. The trade in the hands of peoples under English sovereignty is open to all commerce on equal terms. Not even the sovereign country, except in the recent concessions by Canada, receives a preference. The protection of the British flag is tendered gratis to the colonies and dependencies. The imports of these countries cover about one half of the trade of all the world, outside of Europe and the United States. Though they have but 4.67 per cent of the population, the Anglo-Saxon colonies do sixty-nine per cent of the trade of all the colonies and dependencies of the British Empire.

South and Central America absorb about one fourth—24.6 per cent of imports and 26.7 per cent of exports—of the world's trade here summarized. The colonies peopled by Anglo-Saxon population and the Latin-American states together, though but 7.3 per cent of the inhabitants, do an importing trade of 57.4 per cent of the trade of the world here reviewed. The countries trading under the protection of the British flag and the Latin-American states combined have about seventy-three per cent of that trade among them. All this trade, as well as by far the greatest part of the rest, is