We say advisedly, each interest has looked on with indifference when its neighbour was _destroyed_. That this strong phrase is not misapplied to the effect of these measures in the West Indies, is too well known to require any illustration. Ruin, widespread and universal, has, we know by sad experience, overtaken, and is rapidly destroying these once splendid colonies. While we write these lines, a decisive proof[17] has been judicially afforded of the frightful depreciation of property which has there taken place, from the acts of successive administrations acting on liberal principles, and yielding to popular outcries: the fall has amounted to _ninety-three per cent_. Beyond all doubt, since the new system began to be applied to the West Indies, property to the amount of _a hundred and twenty millions_ has perished under its strokes. The French Convention never did anything more complete. Free-trade fanaticism may well glory in its triumphs; it is doubtful if they have any parallel in the annals of mankind.
We do not propose to resume the debate on the Navigation Laws, of which the public have heard so much in this session of parliament. We are aware that their doom is sealed; and we accept the extinction of shipping protection as _un fait accompli_, from which we must set out in all future discussions on the national prospects and fortunes. But, in order to show how enormously perilous is the change thus made, and what strength of argument and arrays of facts free-trade fanaticism has had the merit of triumphing over, we cannot resist the temptation of transcribing into our pages the admirable letter of Mr Young, the able and unflinching advocate of the shipping interest, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, after the late interesting debate on the subject in the House of Lords. We do so not merely from sincere respect for that gentleman's patriotic spirit and services, but because we do not know any document which, in so short a space, contains so interesting a statement of that leading fact on which the whole question hinges--viz. the progressive and rapid decline of British, and growth of foreign tonnage, with those countries with whom we have concluded reciprocity treaties: affording thus a foretaste of what we may expect now that we have established a reciprocity treaty, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws, with the whole world: