THE SEA THE ONLY ROAD FOR TRA DE.

THE land divides the peoples of the earth; the sea unites them, Though by the greater number of mankind the sea has always been regarded with fear if not with horror, and though most men remain of Horace's opinion that he must have had a breast encircled with oak and triple brass who first dared to fit out and launch a ship, yet it remains historically true that the first intercommunications between nation and nation were by water; that human effort has always most successfully followed the coast-line; that where the sea reaches, there human activity is always most to be found; and that where the sea reaches not, there all communication with the rest of the world comes least and last of all. Thus, while the whole coast of Africa and those parts adjacent thereto have been known and traded with for centuries, it is but yesterday that any communication a set up with, or so much as any knowledge gained of, the interior of that vast peninsular continent by the outside world; and the same may be said of those parts of Asia, and even of Europe, which are most remote from the sea. Nor are things likely ever to alter in this respect (unless, indeed, some means be discovered of navigating the airs as freely as we now navigate the seas), for the impediments in the way of free communication by land are such as must otherwise for ever prevent it from competing on equal terms with the sea. On land a mountain, a morass, a river, a forest, a climate, or even so apparently insignificant a creature as a fly--such as the tsetse-has been and still is found to be an insurmountable obstacle to intercommunication, so that populations between whom such an obstacle intervenes, although living within a short distance of each other, are practically as much separated as though a hemiA chapter of a book which Mr. T. G. Bowles, M. P., proposes to publish.

sphere divided them. No such obstacles exist on the seas, which (except for the entirely insignificant case of the few ports in the northern hemisphere closed in the winter by ice) afford an ever-oper road from every point on their shores to every other point, however remote. And as this road is, of all, the least interrupted of any, so also is it the easiest, the cheapest, and, on the whole, the safest of all, while every day tends to make it safer, and its use more certain. Storm and tempest, ten times greater than any that Horace ever knew, are now held of so little account that they scarce affect by a few hours an Atlantic passage of 3000 miles; even the greater danger of fog is scarcely regarded; and the greatest danger of all-the land-is on the great ocean highways so marked and guarded by light, beacon, and buoy, as to have lost most of its dangers whether by day or by night. If, indeed, we regard the marvellous passenger service which has grown up between North America and Europe, and consider the safety, certainty, and exactitude with which the great liners in that service make their passages, in summer and winter, through fine weather and foul, scarcely varying a few hours in a passage now reduced to a little over six days, whether they meet storm or calm, we should be brought near to the belief that the marine engineer and the marine constructor have, between them, almost abolished the dangers of the seas. The improvements, moreover, which have been accumulated during the last thirty years are so vast, and have recently succeeded each other with so much rapidity, that we may reasonably expect them to be followed by others even more important, and tending still more to increase the certainty, safety, and rapidity of sea-transit.

The extent to which the trade between the various nations of the world is carried on by sea is, perhaps, hardly suspected by many. Nor is it easy to come at the figures; for although the useful statistical abstracts published by the Board of Trade give the total imports and exports respectively of each country, and give also, on a different and distant page, the percentage of each that is carried by sea, yet the figures resulting from those percentages are not worked out.

In order, therefore, to arrive at as near an approximation as might be to the exact proportion of the trade between the nations of the earth which is carried by sea, as compared with the proportion carried by land, I have been at considerable pains to collate certain tables of statistics published by the Board of Trade, and to work out the figures which would result from the percentages given in those tables. The result of my labours is embodied in the following table.

This table cannot be regarded as exactly accurate for several reasons. In the first place, while all the figures therein printed

in Roman characters are taken as they stand from the official returns, those figures which are printed in italics are my own, worked out, as examination of the table will show, from the official totals and percentages; and, in this working out, I may have made some mistakes, though I do not think so.

It is also to be remarked that while in most instances the figures are given for the general imports and exports, yet in some instances they are only given (because only obtainable) for special "imports and exports "—that is, for imports for home consumption alone, and exports of domestic produce alone.

Moreover, there is a latent inexactitude in these figures on account of the different treatment by different countries of imports and exports of bullion.

It seems possible, too, that there may be other inexactitudes in the official figures themselves; for they come from all countries in all shapes; and they are certainly incomplete, since they give no account of the trade of the numerous colonies of the various countries.

Finally (though even this does not exhaust the list of reservations that should strictly be made), it is to be remembered that every import begins by being an export, and that every export ends by becoming an import; so that if we had here the figures for the whole trade of all the countries of the world, the total of imports alone, or of exports alone, would represent the whole value of the goods exchanged or "traded." But we have not here the whole

of the figures for the whole trade; neither have we the freight, which would probably go far towards making up the difference of over two hundred millions between the value of the total imports of the ten principal countries and the value of their total exports. But it will be seen that, if the imports alone of the ten countries be taken, the proportion carried by sea is 71.5 per cent.; that if the exports alone be taken, the proportion is 66.5 per cent.; and that, if imports and exports be taken together, the proportion is 69-2 per cent. So that the extreme difference is 5 per cent. at the outside, which does not appreciably affect the conclusion.

It seems, therefore, that while it must be remembered that the figures are neither absolutely exact nor absolutely complete, yet that this table may be accepted as giving as near an approximation to as full and accurate an account of the world's trade between nations as is at present attainable; and as giving, at any rate, a very fair approximation to an accurate account of the proportion thereof carried by sea.

Here, then, are disclosed some very important facts:

1. That the whole trade between all the (enumerated) nations of the world amounted in 1896 (approximately) to £3,342,309,000. 2. That, of this trade, that which was carried on by the ten principal nations named amounted to £2,839,502,000.

3. That of this last-named trade as much as £1,965,249,999 represents trade carried on by sea.

4. That the trade carried on by sea was from 66.5 per cent. to 71.5 per cent. of the whole.

5. In short, two-thirds in value of the trade was carried on by sea, and only one-third by land.

But there is more than this.

It has not infrequently been alleged that, although the sea is an admirable and must always be a useful road for trade, yet that, for countries having a considerable land frontier, and which march with trading neighbours, the tendency of modern times must be rather for land-carriage to supersede sea-carriage. It is pointed out by those who hold this view-and with perfect truth-that ceaseless and most successful efforts are now made by every trading country to improve its means of communication with its neighbours, not alone by the improvement of roads, but also, and much more, by the building of railways; and it is suggested that the enormous increase in railways and the lowering of their rates of freight must have had, has had, and is having, as a necessary result, the carriage by land of much that was formerly carried by sea, and, to that extent, a consequent diminution in the proportion of sea-trade as compared with land-trade.

Nevertheless, the very contrary appears to be the fact. The trade by land has, no doubt, very greatly increased, owing to the circumstances cited; but, simultaneously with that, the trade by sea has increased even more greatly. So that it would rather seem that the more land-carriage increases, still the more does it lag behind seacarriage, and still the more shows that the sea is destined to be in the future, as it has been in the past, the one great main road for all trade.

This conclusion seems to be fairly deducible from the figures given on pp. 200 and 201 of the Board of Trade Statistical Abstract for the Principal and other Foreign Countries, 1886 to 1895-96 (C. 8881 of 1898). The following table of extracts therefrom shows the variation in the proportion of sea-borne to land-borne trade between the years 1884 and 1896 for each of the countries which figure in the preceding table that possesses both a land and a sea frontier, and in which alone therefore a variation is possible.

It will be seen that in every case except that of Russia, Holland, Austria, and the United States, the proportion of sea-borne to landborne trade has materially increased since 1884, and that only in the