ABSTRACT
The maxim, trade follows the flag, seems to inspire men to practical contradictions. Those who believe that it does spend their energy in devising systems of commerce by which trade may be made to do what it already does. The efficiency of the policy of exclusive trade privileges to the sovereign state, whether in promoting its own trade or the trade of its colonies, is not conspicuous in the records. The principles which rule its trade elsewhere, British trade would be reduced to the narrow limits it has at present in the trade of foreign nations and their dependencies. Colonial trade has done no more than keep pace with the other trade of the British Isles. If the colonies have increased in wealth and in population, and buy two and a half times as much as they did, at the same time new foreign markets have been opened up.
