270 Colonial Policy : [MARCH, 



munity at large, the consumers of this country might be supplied with 

 tea for two millions annually less than it now costs them to obtain it ; 

 and a duty of three halfpence a pound on foreign sugar has been found 

 necessary, to secure to our West India colonists the monopoly of our 

 supply. Now it has been estimated that the average annual consump- 

 tion of sugar in this country is about 380 millions of pounds, and 380 

 millions of three halfpences amount to 2,375,000/. 2,375,000/. is in the 

 article of sugar alone, the sum which every year the lovers of sweet 

 things in this country very benevolently take out of their own pockets, 

 for no other purpose than to bestow a douceur on the colonists, and for 

 no other reason that we could ever discover than because it entered 

 into the heads of sundry wiseacres, centuries ago, to plant themselves in 

 certain islands 3,000 miles away from the land of their nativity. The 

 great are apt to estimate luxuries by their cost. How exquisite to a 

 country is the luxury of colonies ! 



But it is not only by these indirect methods that the colonial system 

 contrives to create an artificial demand upon the industry of the com- 

 munity ; colonists have even had the effrontery to ask, and rulers the 

 dishonesty to allow direct grants out of the public purse, for the mere 

 purpose of enabling the former to embark in a traffic, for which the 

 very occasion of those grants proved that physical causes had rendered 

 them utterly incompetent. The natural superiority in the production 

 of sugars possessed by Brazil and Cuba, left Jamaica and Barbadoes no 

 chance of competition in the continental market, in sugars of the better 

 qualities; since the market price of those sugars, there was not even 

 equal to replace the capital which the latter would have required for its 

 production. But the profits of supplying the continental market were 

 too sweet to the West India planters to be lost from any such incon- 

 siderable an obstacle as natural impediment. " The West India In- 

 terest," consequently, comes down to the House, and contriving, by 

 dint of a number of pompous phrases, to make the country gentlemen 

 believe the great catastrophe it would be to the nation if a few West 

 India proprietors were to be prevented from growing rich, while backed 

 by the logic of borough influence, to supply the deficiency of less equi- 

 vocal argument, they actually obtain a bounty on the exportation of 

 refined sugar, varying from three shillings up to nineteen shillings on 

 every hundred weight of refined sugar which finds its way from England 

 into the foreign market.* 



It may, however, be urged, that all these things are rather abuses 

 than component parts of the colonial system. The answer, however, 

 displays but little knowledge either of principle or experience. The 

 importance of the abuse will always consist in the extent ; but in pro- 

 portion to that extent will the influence for its maintenance which the 

 very abuse creates increase. It is understood that the West India 

 interest has at this moment eighty representatives in the House of Com- 

 mons; and how far such an overwhelming, well organized, and well 

 directed influence must have a tendency to oppose and cramp the liberal 

 policy of Mr. Huskisson, we leave our readers to divine for themselves. 

 But the objection contains within itself a concession of our whole 

 reasoning. The closer the approximation to the subversion of all restric- 

 tions and monopolies, the nearer the approach to annihilation of colonial 

 policy, and the establishment of that freedom of interchange which we 



* Hume's Custom Laws, p. 333. Parliamentary Review, Session 1825, p. 632. 



