MARITIME OBSERVATIONS: 323 
ever one fide, and fall into people’s laps and feald them, 
as is fometimes the cafe, but would be retained in the fe- 
parate divifions, as in figure 27. 
After thefe trifles, permit the addition of a few general 
reflections. Navigation when employed in fupplying ne- 
ceflary provifions to a country in want, and thereby pre- 
venting famines, which were more frequent and deftruc- 
tive before the invention of that art, is undoubtedly a 
blefling to mankind. When employed merely in tranf- 
porting fuperfluities, it is a queftion whether the advan- 
tage of the employment it affords is equal to the mif- 
chief of hazarding fo many lives on the ocean. But when 
employed in pillaging merchants and tranfporting flaves, it 
is clearly the means of augmenting the mafs of human 
mifery. It is amazing to think of the fhips and lives 
rifqued in fetching tea from China, coffee from Arabia, 
fugar and: tobacco from America, all which our anceftors 
did well without. Sugar employs near one thoufand fhips, 
tobacco almoft as many. For the utility of tobacco there 
is little to be faid; and for that of fugar, how much more 
commendable would it be if we could give up the few mi- 
nutes gratification afforded once or twice a day by the tafte 
of fugar in our tea, rather than encourage the cruelties 
exercifed in producing it. An eminent French moralift 
fays, that when he confiders the wars we excite in Africa 
to obtain flaves, the numbers neceflarily flain in thofe wars, 
the many prifoners who perifh at fea by ficknefs, bad pro- 
vifions, foul air, &c. &c. in the tranfportation, and how 
many afterwards die from the hardfhips of flavery, he can- 
not look on a piece of fugar without conceiving it {tained 
with {pots of human blood! Had he added the confidera- 
tion of the wars we make to take and retake the fugar 
iflands from one another, and the fleets and armies that 
perifh in thofe expeditions, he might have feen his fugar 
not merely fpotted, but thoroughly dyed fcarlet in grain. 
It is thefe wars that make the maritime powers of Europe, 
the 
