INDIGO TRADE OF THE EAST INDIES 237 



article of the East Indies; and, if we may judge from this ex- 

 ample, there is every reason to hope that a similar degree of 

 attention will have the same effect on the growth of East Indian 

 ( otton, and soon render us entirely independent of Georgia and 

 < arolina, whether these states escape the dangers of a social 

 revolution, or be engulphed in the ruin provoked by their own 

 folly. The indigo factories in the East Indies are conducted 

 \('ry differently from those in America, on account of the 

 dissimilar circumstances of the population of the two countries. 

 Ill America the indigo plantations, and the works connected with 

 its preparation, are all the same property, and under the same 

 superintendence, while in Bengal the cultivation is exclusively 

 left to the native farmers, who are provided with seed by the 

 factor, and bound to deliver, at a certain rate of prices, the 

 whole of the plants produced from these seeds. The cultivators, 

 in consequence of failures in crops or other accidents, too 

 frequently require advances fi'om their employer; and thus, 

 though nominally free, they are in reality subjected to him, 

 and compelled to raise the indigo exclusively for the supply of 

 his factory. 



These establishments are generally on a very large scale, and 

 nearly always remote from the seat of the English presidencies. 

 The superintendence is seldom intrusted to any but one of the 

 proprietors, who, entirely excluded from the society of his 

 countrymen, consents to many privations, with the hope that in 

 a few years he may reap sufficient wealth to enable him to 

 spend the remainder of his life in comfort, and having accom- 

 plished this end, usually resigns his situation to a junior partner, 

 who pursues the same course. But though "man proposes, God 

 disposes," and thus these brilliant expectations are far from being 

 invariably realised ; for though in good years the profits of an 

 indigo property are immense, yet these periods of prosperity are 

 frequently followed by such disastrous casualties, that in the 

 West Indies the cultivation of indigo had been almost entirely 

 given up, even before the negro emancipation, — many planters, 

 who had hoped to open a gold mine in its pursuit, having been 

 utterly ruined by the devastations of insects, the great mortality 

 among their slaves, in consequence of the noxious exhalations 

 of the fermentation, and the spoiling of the colouring matter by 

 a faulty method of preparation. 



