THE TRADE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3902, 19 April 1877, Page 3

THE TRADE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

• (From "Thti Times.") Our intercourse with America' lias become so enormous, and it has led to changes which are now so essentially parts of our every-day life, that we can hardly realise the rapidity with which it has sprung up, or the comparatively small limits within which, at a very recent date, it was confined. When we read of the first attempt at establishing direct communication between Liverpool and New York, it is dh'ly by Sit effort that we remind purselves of the lateness of the date at which the as yet doubtful project was ventured upon. Of the measure of success which has followed it, the state of modern Liverpool is sufficient witness. That it should not yet be forty years since the first mails were conveyed to America by a regular service of steam vessels, and that the wants of the time were satisfied by a contract for only one vessel in a fortnight, are equally facts which it is difficult for us to bring home to oiirselves or to estimate at their proper iiteariiiig. America has now become in a tery real sense a part of our own country. _ Ships from a dozen of our ports are sailing thither every day and almost every tide. We visit it for a holiday excursion, and receive a message from it in the course of a few minutes. Half a century ago it was connected with us only by an occasional and uncertain link, and the passage from the one shore to the other was an adventure, which few on either side had the boldness or energy to encounter. We must consider the interval of time strictly, and without reference to the events which haA r e happened in it, if we are to keep it within its proper measure. Our trade with the great American continent is even now much less than it ought to be, and it is maintained at its present level under difficulties which ought not to exist. The supply of provisions from America can be poured unceasingly into tins country without danger of exceeding the ever-growing demand. It is less easy just now to furnish a cargo in the opposite direction. The Americans do not want manufactured iron. They practically refuse to admit hardwares or manufactured goods. The vessels which we send out to fetch corn are thus compelled to load themselves with something else on their outward voyage. Salt , happens to be the one thing they can carry, and they carry it accordingly, and they do so, as might be expected, at merely nominal rates. The consequence, of course, is that the steamers in the American trade must either be content with something like half profits or, must make up for loss in one. direction by higher rates in the other. The selling price of provisions from America is thus above what it ought to be, and the supply is of course less. Both countries are sufferers, and, so far, without even the semblance of a gain to either of them. Atlantic traffic is sustained, in fact, just now by hope, and though there are no signs even so of its falling off, it is clear that we can form no notion of the proportions it might attain on less cameleon-like fare.